I work in recycling & waste management AMA

[amawaster]

I've worked in waste & recycling for the last 12 years for various different councils. I've worked on waste reduction projects, Home composting, waste & recycling collections, waste disposal & contracts & lots & lots of communication projects!

Waste & recycling are something people always seem to discuss & the media coverage of my industry is rarely positive despite all of the incredible efforts of the many committed individuals working in it.

Hoping I should be able to answer your questions!

Fly tipping seems to be on the rise but it tends to be perpetrated by the people you see advertising waste clearances on Facebook rather than householders to be fair.

Every time a service changes you get kick back from the general public in the form of fly tipping. It's really annoying because it's them who pay for it indirectly & it's always more expensive to clear than if they'd just done the right thing in the first place 🙄

I hate the fact that we have to guess whether something's recyclable. Companies should be forced into printing on the product whether it's recyclable or not - some just say "May be recyclable" - that's no good!

So eg - you buy a block of butter. It's in foil. Can that be recycled? Should it be washed? (I assume so.) What about the plastic tubs of butter? And what about plastic bottles of oil - do we have to wash those thoroughly beforehand?

What about plastic tubes of suncream etc that you can't get clean no matter how hard you try?

What swaps have you made in your own shopping so that the products you now buy have recyclable packaging?

Our recyclables go to a MRF, which I find absolutely fascinating.

My first ever job was working in waste management (landfills and contaminated groundwater).

Surely it wastes loads of drinking quality water to wash all the recycling before it gets collected because surely it needs washed (or superheated) again. I know they can’t be trusting each households to wash properly. Why not take that part out the equation? It feels like a waste of water.

Our recycling rules are mad - no cardboard egg boxes, no glass

Can dirty foil be recycled?

Is there anyway to deal with cat litter responsibly? I have using it but it is biodegradable however sealing it in plastic bags kinda spoils the effect!

Plastics are the thing that seem to muddy the water. AFAIK there are only a few different types of collections- plastic bottles only or plastic pots, tubs & trays. Any other types of plastic (bags, squeeze tubes, rigid packaging, toys etc) are generally not collected at the kerbside. They can be recycled, but you'll have to take them to a household waste recycling centre to make sure of it.

They need to be clean for a couple of reasons 1) so when they get mashed up in the back of the lorry they don't contaminate paper & card, 2) so the people working to sort the waste by hand aren't exposed to rank mouldy packaging (

We have food waste collections. Will the removal of this waste from going to landfill increase the breakdown time of all the waste that does go?

Tbh @WellTidy not much these days!! I went through a very obsessive phase & it didn't really do my mental health much good! I am fastidious about recycling though & could go for 6 weeks easily without a waste collection.

The thing that people usually comment on is my reusable baby wipes. DD had quite bad eczema so material wipe & a bit of water was great for her skin. I've been using them for a year now & would recommend them to anyone

Also use a mooncup but I'm not starting that conversation!

Landfill sites are basically underground waste stores. Ideally you don't want any biological activity at all, as it mainly happens under anaerobic conditions meaning methane is produced. In a landfill site it can be hard to trap methane, which is a greenhouse gas approximately 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, so has a big impact on global warming.

More modern sites are set up to harvest the methane and they burn it to create electricity for use onsite & to go back to the grid. Some older sites have flares on them as the gas isn't a good enough quality to burn for electricity, they look pretty cool 😎

There was a project in recent years to see how methane loving bacteria could be used to remediate old landfill sites. Stuff like this is why I love my job!!

Do the clear glass bottles with a hint of green go in clear glass or green glass?

Fishfinger boxes - should these be rinsed quickly or will the water spoil the cardboard?

So when someone is sorting through the mixed bag of recycling that my husband has put a baked bean tin in that hasn't been rinsed out, for one thing it may have contaminated paper and card by getting sauce on it, and also someone will have to sort this out by hand and wash it? Or is it just rejected?
(I'm a rinser, he isn't.)

Is the glass all smashed when it gets to you?

Polystyrene- can anything be done with it?

@Twooter I think I know the type you mean- I would say clear. If in doubt it's best in green as this is what gets mixed. Same with blue glass if you ever have any.

@BessMarvin metals rarely get hand sorted as they can be pulled out by magnets. Bean juice will be all over the paper it's been collected with, that gets hand sorted so will be gross. When the metal is baled & ready to be sold inspections are carried out & food residue is a pretty obvious contaminant, especially if it's sat in a container for a few weeks! All it needs is a quick rinse out, doesn't need to go through the dishwasher!!!

@Tomboytown yep it's smashed to smitherines by the time it's delivered to the yard! Smashing bottles into glass banks is one of my great pleasures in life

@Tomboytown sorry so excited about smashing bottles didn't reply re polystyrene!! Nope nothing to be done with it unfortunately. Reuse is your only option.

How do I recycle the sorts of bottles with flip lids that soy and Worcestershire sauce come in - I can't get the lids off for love nor money and shred up my hands trying. (There are 2 on my draining board now.)

Bottles like this:

and this:

Don't worry about it @kaitlinktm they will come off as part of the recycling process. Hopefully you've got separate glass collections so any liquid inside won't effect anything else.

It's glass, plastic and metal together unfortunately

@kaitlinktm do they get separated when they're collected or all tipped together? Sounds like kerbside sort to me, so should be fine

They get all tipped together - is that bad?

Not necessarily bad. If you want to be recycler #1 then you could give them a quick rinse but I know from experience they're quite tricky, plus it's probably unnecessary tbh.

Thanks amawaster - I will certainly rinse them as best I can - better than shredding my hands up anyway.

This thread is so interesting - I hope there are more questions and I haven't killed it.