recycle right.
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Grades 8-12
Tutorial 2: Recyclables vs. Contamination
Objetive: Post a recycling guide to help your household recycle and check your blue bin for items that don’t belong.
“To err is human…” This famous quote from the 1700’s obviously wasn’t referring to the mistakes people make while recycling their waste items, but many people do jeopardize the benefits of recycling by making careless errors.
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Sometimes the task of sorting a waste item into the correct bin seems so daunting that people end up throwing it into any bin because...hey, at least I didn’t litter. But when items are placed in the wrong bin, they may end up going into the landfill instead of being recycled. In fact, one mistake in the recycling bin can send an entire load of recyclables to the landfill. Other items, inadvertently placed in the recycling bin, have the ability to damage the expensive equipment at a recycling plant.
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Over 80% of the materials we use every day are recyclable and therefore can be diverted from the landfill. In Tutorial 1, you read about how the proliferation of landfills fueled the recycling movement. Another critical reason to embrace recycling is the toll industrialization has taken on our finite natural resources. By reprocessing used materials into new products, we slow the consumption of natural resources such as wood, water and fossil fuels.
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The Contamination Conundrum
But conserving resources and making new products from old ones can only happen if recycling best practices are followed. The sad truth is that 25% of the items we try to recycle are contaminated and ultimately end up in the landfill. Contamination happens when the wrong items, or dirty items, are placed in the recycling bin. This is because they can contaminate or spoil the entire load of the recyclable material in the bin. This contaminated load must go to the landfill, taking perfectly acceptable recycling material with it. |
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Contamination is mostly an issue with the blue recycling bin. In order for materials to be recycled, they need to be clean, empty and dry. If your half-full yogurt container spills all over your newspaper in the blue bin, then the paper cannot be recycled. Even water can contaminate your paper recyclables. Soaking wet paper has shorter fibers and is less valuable as a resource. Throwing a half-full bottle of water in the recycle bin wastes water and will contaminate the paper in the recycling bin.
Another type of contamination happens when you put non-recyclable items in the blue bin. This is sometimes called “wish-cycling,” where you put things in the blue bin hoping that they find a new life as a recycled product. Because “wish-cycling’’ might lead to complete load rejection, you may actually be causing more harm than good.
To avoid contamination, learn the basics about what to place in each bin. Use the list below to help you.
To avoid contamination, learn the basics about what to place in each bin. Use the list below to help you.
The Blue Bin - Recyclable
Thin, soft plastic, like a bread bag or sandwich bags that crinkle in your hand are much more difficult to recycle. Try to avoid them. If you can’t avoid soft plastics, collect them separately and bring them to a grocery store that recycles soft plastics and place them where they collect used shopping bags. |
Glass, Aluminum, and Tin
Glass, aluminum and tin go into the blue bin but make sure the items are fairly clean. Check that your bottle is empty and give that tomato sauce jar a quick rinse before placing it in the bin. Foil and cans are easy materials to recycle. Glass is also easy to recycle into new products, but glass bottles need to be whole and unbroken. Recycling these materials is important because they can take several hundred years to break down in a landfill. When we recycle, not only are the materials made into something new by using waste as a resource, but we’re also saving space in the landfills. Rigid Plastic
Unlike metals and glass, which take a really long time to break down, plastics never fully break down. It’s important to recycle plastic because plastic pollution is one of the top threats to our world oceans’ ecosystems. Only rigid plastics can be recycled in your blue bin. If you can tap it on the counter and it makes a noise, it’s likely the plastic is hard enough to recycle. It is very important to make sure the item is fairly clean to avoid contaminating other recyclables in the bin. Paper and Cardboard Recycling paper conserves natural resources, saves energy, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and keeps landfill space free for other types of trash. You can recycle many different paper products including computer paper, newspaper, junk mail, cereal boxes, egg cartons, soda boxes, and cardboard. Paper contamination isn’t as much of a problem as the other items in the blue bin, but if you’re going to recycle your pizza box, make sure it’s not greasy. If you are really ambitious, you can just rip off the portion of the box that is soiled and recycle the rest of it. You can conserve space in the blue bin by breaking down your cardboard boxes before you recycle them. |
The Green Bin - Green Waste
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In Oceanside, yard waste and tree trimmings are collected and recycled at a huge composting facility called El Corazon. The material is transformed into high quality compost and mulch, and then made available for free to Oceanside residents. When used in your yard, these products will improve your soil, help retain moisture and save water, and add vital nutrients, reducing the need for extra fertilizers and pesticides.
The types of materials that belong in your green waste bin include: lawn clippings, leaves, weeds, tree branches, and garden trimmings. You can put sawdust and wood (untreated, unpainted) in the green bin too. |
The Gray Bin - Landfill Waste
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Anything that doesn’t belong in the blue or green bins needs to go in the gray waste bin. This can include a variety of items, but some of the common ones are food wrappers, foam food take-out containers, broken glass or mirrors, pet waste, floor sweepings, plastic utensils and straws, squishy plastic like bags and packaging, and diapers. Until you have a brown food scraps recycling bin, food scraps and food-soiled paper products will also go in the gray bin. In the meantime, you might think about composting your food scraps in a pile in your yard or learning how to vermicompost on your patio. Vermicomposting is using worms in a container to help breakdown kitchen waste.
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Beyond the Bins
You may have some other items that don’t fit into any of the categories, and there are certain things that do not belong in the gray bin because they need to be disposed of properly.
You may have some other items that don’t fit into any of the categories, and there are certain things that do not belong in the gray bin because they need to be disposed of properly.
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Tutorial Challenge
1. Look inside your household's blue recycle bin and see if you can spot any contamination. The list below includes things that are commonly put in the blue bin but don’t belong there. If you find any of these items, put them in the gray landfill bin or set them aside for proper disposal. How many items did you find?
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2. Print this guide and place it somewhere your entire family can see.
