Scrub 'em and tub 'em? (Wash Post)

SHOULD YOU WASH RECYCLEABLE CONTAINERS?

 

By Nina Shen Rastogi

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I've always been dedicated to washing the peanut butter, Pepsi and mayo out of my food containers before tossing them into the recycling bin. My sister, though, pointed out that I'm probably wasting gallons upon gallons of precious H20! Is it worth it to soap up my tin cans and soda bottles?

Not really. Recycling facilities are well equipped to handle dirty cans and bottles, so some caked-on tomato sauce and the occasional stray chickpea won't significantly hinder the process. (They can even handle that lime wedge you left in your Corona bottle.) Residue left on plastic or glass containers generally gets flushed out with water at some point in the process; most of the gunk left behind on steel and aluminum cans is burned away when they get melted down. So there's no need to waste water: Even if you were to get your recyclables squeaky clean, they'd probably end up getting washed again, anyhow.

That being said, the Green Lantern doesn't advocate tossing cans and bottles immediately, and she really doesn't want you chucking half-full jars. It's wasteful and it's just not sanitary: Food scraps can lead to mold and bacteria growth, and the smell can attract insects and other vermin.

After you put your recyclables on the curb, there's plenty of time for stuff to start spoiling and rotting. Cans and bottles go to a facility where they're sorted and baled, They might sit there for weeks or months before they're sold to a reprocessing facility, where they'll be cleaned before getting ground up, melted down or chipped into flakes.

Imagine your bottle of half-eaten, four-month-old tartar sauce, lounging in a stuffy warehouse and getting riper by the day. Not pleasant, is it? So the Green Lantern suggests that you scrape out as much food residue as you can (the Lantern recommends using one of those skinny, flexible baking spatulas), and then swish out the can or bottle in your leftover dishwater. If you use a dishwasher, don't take up valuable real estate with items meant for the recycling bin. Just fill a bowl with water and use it to clean out any food particles, ideally from several containers at once.

Rinsing is an especially good idea if your community participates in single-stream recycling, where everything from newspapers to detergent bottles are placed in a single curb-side bin. Paper is easily contaminated by oil and grease, which is why pizza boxes usually aren't accepted unless they're pristine. If you're really concerned about making the recycling process as efficient as possible, read your community guidelines so that you're not overloading the system with non-recyclable materials.

Here's an even better idea: Why not try cutting down on packaging in general? Recycling is only the third R in the waste-management hierarchy, after all -- reducing and reusing are even better. According to the EPA, Americans generated 254 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2007. (That's everyday, nonindustrial trash.) Containers and packaging made up the biggest fraction of that waste -- 30.9 percent, or 78.4 million tons. Nearly half of that amount ended up being recycled, but it would be better if we had less packaging to begin with. After all, disposal is only part of the equation: There are also significant environmental costs that come with manufacturing those boxes, cans and bottles. In fact, a widely cited 1992 study by the Boston-based Tellus Institute found that 99 percent of the environmental harm caused by packaging came from its production, not its disposal. And -- major bonus -- if you don't buy it in the first place, you don't have to worry about cleaning it when you're done.