An Unfortunate Recycling Discovery
We're always learning, and this week we learned that a few materials we thought could be recycled relatively easily and locally cannot be. We can still accept these items through our TerraCycle program but not as part of our lower-cost "premium" or "clamshells and cartons" recycling programs. They are:
- Paper coffee cups
- Waxy cardboard ice cream tubs, takeout cartons, and soup and ramen cups
- Numbered plastic in non-container form (hangers, toys, miscellaneous stuff that's not a container)
To clarify, we can still take milk, juice, broth, and similar cartons as part of the lower-cost programs. Surprisingly, these cartons are more recyclable than paper coffee cups and ice cream tubs due to investments by carton manufacturers in developing the recycling processes and markets for the materials. (See these links for interesting info on milk/juice carton, ice cream tub, and paper cup recycling). The long cardboard fibers in cartons are more valuable than the shorter ones used in ice cream tubs, and recycling facilities are set up to recognize the shape of the milk/juice/broth cartons. (Which brings up another point: It's best not to crush your cartons—or cans or bottles for that matter—so that the modern machinery designed to separate single-stream waste can easily recognize the original shape.)
We wish we could recycle all of these things easily and cheaply. But we know that wish-cycling does more harm than good to the system overall. We will continue to seek accessible and affordable recycling options and dig deeper into recycling processes and guidelines to get you the best advice we can.
