Is It Better To Recycle...?

Question

I have been putting things in my recycle bin without rinsing, removing labels and with caps on (water bottles).

Is this acceptable?

Does anyone know what happens to items that arrive in this condition?

Do they go through extra processing?

Get thrown away?

Here I thought I was doing the right thing.

Answer 1

I always rinse out recycables.  One because the garbage people asked me to and two because I don't want to attract ants and flies during the 2 week wait.  ( I can only assume the garbage people have a good reason, but I don't know what it is.)

-MM

Answer 2

If material can not be readily removed the recycling people will likely send it to landfill.

But once they soak the items most stuff will come off if your rinsing would take it off.

Ants have been known to remove most food from packages.

Glass is a special case. It does not really make sense to transport glass long distances to have it recycled. It helps keep it out of landfill, but the alternative is making new glass from sand. The earth is made of sand. It is not a scarce or finite resource. If we can arrange to reuse instead of recycle, then we should reuse glass.

Answer 3

recycling is always a good thing to do since most things can be recycled at least once. you should rinse recyclable items before putting them in the bins, but it isnt required.

Answer 4

Who cares? Its a make work project for enviroweenies.

Answer 5

Regardless of how you put things into your recycle bin, they go through a cleaning and disinfecting process that removes labels anyhow.  Keep on recycling.

Answer 6

Recycling is a great way to help out the enviornment and have an orderly waste process

Answer 7

Rinsing will help to remove contamination, especially food.

That will keep skunks & raccoons out of your blue-boxes.

Paper labels will be removed by soaking or burning.

Caps are usually broken off in the processing anyway.

They do require some extra handling as a result.

Whatever you can do will lower sosts in the long run.

Better quality makes re-selling the by-products easier.