To tell you that if you don't wash your recycling...

[MrsColon]

...before you put it in the recycling bin, it won't get recycled?

If you don't rinse out cans, containers, bottles etc. they will be rejected and go into landfill.

Not enough emphasis is placed on this in recycling campaigns, and in my experience, the majority of people just don't realise this.

@minimonkey11 so are you saying it doesn't really matter ( in terms of recycling ability) if people don't rinse/scrape their cans/ packs? I'd love to know! Our local service sent out a list of stuff their manual pickers can't handle and they ask for clean and dry

We don’t as per a previous poster - it would be using more water than needed. We take out the recyclables daily so no small etc in our house. Off to google now on what our council requires as most certainly is rather be sure our items are recycled.

Did not know about pizza boxes (but we hardly ever eat pizza).

Very interesting. Had a read on our council website. Nothing about finding out (but now I’ll do it, not sure about my family)

Found it interesting that it is not only pizza boxes they do not want but other food containers too.

Omg I didn't know?! What an absolute waste of recycling..ffs

We don’t as per a previous poster - it would be using more water than needed.

Do you never have any washing up that can't go in the dishwasher? Would you not use the same water to rinse out tins, jars and bottles?

The way people talk about using up precious water you would think they lived in the Sahara Desert, not rainy UK. It doesn't add a huge amount to your water bill to give a tin or jar a quick swill out either.

TBH I just think these excuses justifying laziness are lame.

Different councils have different rules, we only get basic recycling as part of our regular waste collection.

Next council has compost and glass recycling. As standard. There should be a national scheme that has the same rules

My bastard council refuses to give me a bigger black big for general waste and only collects it every 3 weeks, so I put everything I can possibly get away with into recycling. I give things a quick rinse but I'm not washing it thoroughly. The council can deal with it as far as I am concerned - I give them a lot of money in council tax and they provide fewer and fewer services in exchange. I suspect it all ends up in landfill anyway!

@Handoverthechocollate

Very interesting. I have a friend who has just done a PhD on whether it's better for the climate to rinse recyling , or just stick it in the recycling. She concluded that it was WORSE for the climate to waste water on rinsing plastic items, tins etc. before recyclinig. I don't think she factored in the fact that it might get thrown into landfill. She even went to the recycling plant and there was no mention of it being washed/thrown away!!

Of course she considered that, it's a phd not a primary 7 project!

*Do people seriously not rinse out their recycling before it goes in the bin?!?!? Even things full of food waste? That's so disgusting!!!!
*

Do people seriously throw away things still full of food? - what a waste!

To the pp who has 'known this for years' perhaps it was the case years ago but our local council now says it's not necessary, they claim to have a state of the art recycling plant that sorts and cleans things so the stuff would all be being cleaned twice that's a lot of water. We don't have to separate our recycling except the glass. There are no people standing picking through the waste - you'd need hundreds surely for the amount of waste generated by a mid sized city.

It’s true that different councils have different rules and a different array of materials that can be collected. Some is because of affordability and some is due to historic long- term contracts, and the recycling market is up and down and councils want stability. Some councils say no greasy card because their contractor gets a better price for clean card. If it specifically says not to then don’t but also don’t assume it all goes to landfill anyway. The council will not put recycling collections in to send it to landfill. Landfill is expensive! I would ask them why they don’t want the cardboard!

Also more and more councils process the residual (normal) waste to remove metals and other fractions before the remaining waste is sent to energy recovery.

I don't confidently know what can be recycled. Our local authority has asked for no food bits and ask us to rinse recycling to remove any food bits. Lids are fine if attached to the bottles. Most plastic is not recyclable. Paper is fine but not all. Tins are fine.

Our list of what not to put in is small - everywhere is different

Our LA changed what can be kerbside collected a few years ago when they started using a ( cheaper) provider. We can no longer put tetrapaks in the recycling for example. There's a whole list that we are supposed to take to the recycling centre which is 10 miles away and I am housebound. There are glass recycling bins in town but as a holiday town these are always overflowing I am told. And as always there's a list of which plastics can go and which not ( so no toothpaste tubes) which is not simple for everyone to remember. I believe the rules should be set by central government and adhered to by LAs. The main focus of our LA is to keep down the cost of the council tax ( understandable) but we have just had COP26 and someone needs to act

The way people talk about using up precious water you would think they lived in the Sahara Desert, not rainy UK. It doesn't add a huge amount to your water bill to give a tin or jar a quick swill out either.

It’s not an infinite resource, we should all be trying to reduce our usage. Add in the amount of resource it takes to get that clean water to your tap, then any waste with the “quick rinse” would at least partially offset the environmental benefit of recycling.

TBH I just think these excuses justifying laziness are lame.

Or, people understand the whole process and want to do what’s best.

I've never washed mine and it's always been taken away.

What about all the water wasted doing this? We are told not to flush the toiler after a number one to save water, but to waste water on washing the recycling. Sounds like we are just being sent from pillar to post.

I nice visited our local recycling processing place. It was huge and they had machines and people sorting at different points. There were people removing plastic bags but machines with magnets pulling out some of the tins for example.

They said that contamination is a problem and that it can affect the amount of money they can get for the recycling that has a value. Interestingly they said that rinsing was important but also drying afterwards as a lot of issues were caused by soggy paper/ cardboard.

Once. Not nice...

@minimonkey11

This simply isn’t true. I work in waste. Most MRFs are a mixture of automated and manual picking- the people are picking the contra items like big bits of plastic film or bulky textiles etc- not checking individual cans. Then all desirable fractions are sent for reprocessing.

If recycling is kerbside sorted then it is bulked up at a depot/transfer station and sent to a reprocessor where all materials are washed during the reprocessing.

MRF rejects are directed to further sorting plants or energy from waste- rarely landfill.

Exactly.
This type of thread might make some not bother with recycling. You don't have to completely clean but rinse off . Please recycle as much as you can.

Our council already makes us separate our rubbish into 7 (yes...7) different types of recycling bags/bins: general, garden, plastic, card, paper, food and glass/metals. Why card and paper are separate is a mystery to us.

I give stuff a brief rinse if easy to do, but I am not that fastidious. We already seem to do the majority of "sorting" for the council anyway.

There needs to be a nationwide consensus on recycling and the number of bins/bags. Barely anyone in our area recycles all 7 types. Most people put out general, garden and glass. We do all 7 and it takes up so much room.

Where I am our recycling is hand sorted so needs to be rinsed, the thought of putting dirty recycling into bags just seems odd to me anyway. I feel like most people would realise that things won’t be easy to recycle if they’ve had food drying on them for a week or two? The water it would take to sort that compared to a quick rinse at home I’m surprised people are saying their councils say it’s not necessary. Really interesting.

My local authority website says to rinse glass, doesn't say to rinse cans but I do.

I want to get better at food waste, ours goes into the green bin with garden waste. I always forget than you can put cooked waste and tea bags etc. in and not just peels and cores.

Always done it, other people think I'm the crazy one too.

Yep. DH spends ages washing the empty containers as carefully as one washes the dishes. Then they need to dry. Then carefully crushed. The fucking recycling gets cared for better than a bloody pet! And it's basically hanging around for ages drying out awaiting crushing.

And for what - no one else around here is washing it (their views involve hurling litter into the street) so it's all going to landfill anyway.

Just to reiterate - it’s not ‘all just going to landfill anyway’

It’s not an infinite resource

It is where I live. We have had to open the taps on out water butts and attach hoses to them to the drain because they were brimming over.