Two Reasons To Keep Glass Separate When You Recycle
Posted on: 17 May 2016
If you want to recycle as many materials as possible, you've no doubt sent a lot of glass to your town's recycling facilities. However, if you have a tendency to mix the glass in with other recyclable materials, you could be making all of the materials, from the glass to whatever else you have, unrecyclable. Glass itself is highly recyclable and rather easy for companies to reuse. But the way you treat it when it comes time to recycle it is vital for the success of the recycling effort, and keeping the glass separate is the best way to help. Here are two reasons why you should keep your glass separate and recycle it at a dedicated facility.
Broken Glass Contamination
If you've ever dumped a bag of recycling into a recyclable-goods dumpster at an apartment building or park and heard a terrible smash, you're not alone. Anyone dropping glass into large containers has probably just ruined everything in the container. These large containers have the opening at the top, meaning what you put in there has to fall a few feet, often onto the metal floor of the dumpster. If you put glass in there, there's a good chance the glass will break.
The result is that anything in there will now have shards of glass mixed in with it. The people who have to sort through the recycling risk cutting themselves and getting glass splinters because of the broken glass. And if they miss any glass and it heads into the recycling stream for another material, it can ruin that batch of recycling.
It's better to recycle the glass separately, either in a dedicated bin or through a reclamation center that refunds any deposits you paid when you bought the bottles to begin with.
Food and Waste Contamination
Another problem is food and other contamination. You have to rinse out the glass first; otherwise, the bits of drink or food left in there will also get over the rest of the materials in the recycling bin, and those bits of food and drink can make the recycling stream unusable. If the bottles have labels, corks, caps, or other non-glass materials, those too can contaminate the recycling stream.
Even if you're taking glass over to a dedicated glass recycling center, do the workers a favor and clean the glass and remove any non-glass materials.
If you take these admittedly simple steps, you ensure a lot more material gets recycled successfully. If you have questions about recycling, contact a company like B-P Trucking Inc.
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