To not wash out recyclable containers??

[DisgruntledGoat]

I think it's totally unnecessary to blast containers with water that are going to be cleaned and recycled anyway. My DH sometimes puts them through the dishwasher which drives me nuts. They flip the right way up and fill with dirty water and when you pull the rack out they spill water everywhere covering the clean stuff with the dirty water that's trapped inside. Plus you wouldn't wash out non recyclables to put them in the general bin?! AIBU or does anyone else put dirty recyclables straight into their recycling bins?

I do however give most things a quick rinse to try keep my bins clean.

Contentious admission drusilla

I stick tins in the dishwasher but only in the corners where the d/w is quite bad at cleaning mugs and glasses. That way I don't feel I am wasting a resource.

I always wash recycling containers / jam jars etc in dishwasher before putting them in bins- they'd stink otherwise! and attract cats and rats

Oh. I don't. I vaguely remember reading that we didn't need to. I don't have any room in the dishwasher and I don't run a bowl of soapy water as everything else goes in the dishwasher. I put it all in the wheelie bin regularly, I've never noticed a smell. I rinsed out a can of tomatoes just then, but there is still residue that wouldn't come off without a proper wash.

I'm pretty sure they're immune to the smell after a few days. I used to be really uptight about these things, but not everyone is going to thoroughly wash things out are they so our household waste is going to make zero difference in the grand scheme of things. I barely have time to wash myself let alone the bloody rubbish.

I didn't know this about them polluting a whole lot of recycling. Either way I always rinse them out in the dishwater after washing up - no water wasted and no smelly containers I do know somebody who rinses them out really thoroughly with clean running water and it does annoy me a bit!

If it ends up in landfill (either because it's considered contaminated and therefore can't be recycled or because you choose not to recycle it), then it essentially never biodegrades - even technically biodegradable materials struggle to disintegrate because once they're covered in other rubbish there's not enough air to allow them to. When the landfill site is full it gets capped and the stuff sits there forever. And we dig another big hole in the ground somewhere (probably somewhere in the countryside away from homes as who wants that in their back garden) and fill that up too. People will be able to dig up your rubbish thousands of years from now and it will still be recognisable.
We're pretty good at 'recycling' water - whilst we may have shortages at times we're not going to run out. And energy sources are getting greener all the time. But it's just not sustainable to keep burying stuff in the ground. It might cost you a matter of pennies over the year to give them a quick rinse (especially if you reuse washing up water to do it, or even get yourself a water butt if you have outside space and are that worried about wasting water), but in terms of the environmental cost it's worth every penny, and then some.

I don't buy peanut butter anymore I just put peanuts on bread, it's just as tasty. Balancing peanuts on toast is more tricky but doable. I don't put jars with labels in the dishwasher - the labels come off and disintegrate, I think it could cause a blockage. I also worry that plastic containers would melt in the dishwasher. As far as I know anyway, labels have never had to be soaked off bottles? It uses up hot water (have to find container big enough) and is time consuming. Another one is mayonnaise bottles which require overnight soaking and wiping with kitchen roll at the rim. I've ended up saving bits of half used kitchen roll for this purpose. Coleslaw containers have to go in the landfill.

I just put our recycling on the side in the kitchen. It magically gets in the wheelie bin and doesn't stink.

DH does moan a lot about this and tries to explain its not magic - yet he doesn't believe me that there aren't lots of other magic fairies doing all the other jobs! (He's not tidy - the only thing he does is put stuff in the bin!)

From seeline's link this morning:

Leave metal caps and lids on glass jars and bottles

Lids on jars have plastic seals so I put those in the bin. Should I just lob them in?

Lids on wine bottles have a soft plasticky pad inside - I remove the pads & then put the lids in the recycling (as they are aluminium?)

I do wash out plastic milk bottles, glass jars, & tins of eg tomatoes, but not wine or beer bottles.

People will be able to dig up your rubbish thousands of years from now and it will still be recognisable.

So in a few hundred years there'll be some equivalent of Time Team digging up our jars and musing about the Peanut Butter Age ...

We have been told that we have to wash the containers we put in to our recycling, or they will be contaminate the load and it will all be rejected.

Peanut butter jars are buggers but if you scrape out as much as possible, then nearly fill with hot soapy water, soak & give a really good shake, it leaves them pretty clean

Here they request that things are rinsed out before we put them in the green/blue/black recycling bits so I've always washed them

I also remove lids from jam jars and glass bottles are they request we do that too

There's a difference between rinse and wash, surely. Do they want sparkling clean jars?

If a load of recycling can be rejected by one soiled item I'm surprised that anything gets recycled at all.

Fingers are the best weapon against the peanut butter that won't shift. Same with mayo, though if I've not anywhere near finished the jar before it goes off, I often just ditch the whole revolting congealed thing.

I also don't worry about small traces, as our glass is collected separately from everything else. Our council doesn't take coloured plastic, so black ready meal trays, coloured bottle lids and the like end up in landfill.

Peanut butter jar? Use used water (after washing up first for example), rinse out the wine bottle, pour that into the milk carton, then pour that into the jar. Screw on lid. Shake and or leave to soak. Can also use dregs of car wash bucket or used bath water instead.

I present you the Nutella jar. Very difficult to clean. Probably the only thing I don't wash out.

I watched a programme once about people on zero hours contracts at the end of the chain of recycling - working for Biffa Waste. Their working conditions are hideous and they don't even have job security. They had to sort the recycling waste by hand after it was loaded onto a sort of conveyor belt. Gross.
Personally I would hate to deal with milk/meat containers after a couple of weeks either sweating in the heat or getting full of water which might then run down my arm when I am attempting to empty it into the green bin.
I don't rinse out things like coke cans, but definitely rinse things like baked beans/milk/yoghurt/dog meat containers.

As others have said, if you don't rinse them out they contaminate the whole batch and everything has to be sent to landfill. Bottles and most plastic can just be rinsed- anything heavily soiled can go in the dishwasher or washing-up bowl.

I never used to, and thought I was helping feed the local cats. Except it wasn't cats...it was rats! I now rinse everything.

Ah now the Nutella jar is usually spotless by the time I've finished with it. Unlike peanut butter (ugh!) I have no qualms over licking that clean if need be...

If you fill a peanut butter jar with water from soaking any other dishes, add a tiny drip of washing up liquid, then the next day it wipes clean really easily.

Glass and cans are worth quite a lot to your council - I did some maths a while back comparing the value of recycling vs cost of landfill and it worked out as nearly 2p a can! Plastics and mixed paper/card not worth much beyond diversion from landfill - I'd be happy to see more of those simply incinerated (very strict limits on cleaning gases on incineration plants nowadays, not like in the 60s).