What Really Happens to My Recycling?

A few points on recycling and how you can best go about it.

By John Delfausse, vice president global package development and chief environmental officer, Estée Lauder Corporate Packaging, member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition—and
member of Beauty Packaging’s Board of Advisors

I get a lot of questions from my wife about recycling.She frequently asks, “Can I recycle this or should it go in the garbage?”Recently she asked, “What happens to a bottle after I recycle it?”

Many folks fail to recycle because they don’t believe that what they drop in a recycling bin gets recycled—or if it does, that it goes to any really good use. To clear up any confusion, I will lay out a few points on recycling and how you can best go about it.

Not all recycling is the same. Post Industrial Recycling (PIR), for instance, is one of the more effective recycling methods because scrap from an industrial process is easily identifiable. The material, its quality and its source are most likely reliable and therefore it can be effectively used by another industry. PIR is an example of a business-to-business recycling model that works.

Then there’s Post Consumer Recycling (PCR). This includes the stuff we recycle at home and in the office—and the source of most consumer confusion over what to toss in the recycle bin and what to toss in the garbage.

Let’s Look at Plastic

Very few community recycling programs take back all plastic categories. If you live in a community that does, you should feel pretty good about the fact that you can recycle almost any plastic that you have. The SPI codes (the numbers from one to seven enclosed in triangles at the bottom of plastic containers) identify the type of plastic from which a container was made.

There are some recyclers who have the mechanisms to separate the different materials with automation, but they are few and far between. That is why most community recycling programs only take plastic bottles marked with a number one or two code on the bottom. These include bottles for soda, water, milk, shampoo, detergent and others, which have a strong market reuse in new bottles, bale strapping or even in new carpet, patio furniture or wood.

Last summer, my daughter was buying iced tea for her husband. She went from brand to brand picking up the bottles and looking at the bottom.She was looking for the number one or two so that she could make sure she could recycle the package. Now, that is one smart girl!

When it comes to clear clamshells, yogurt cartons or butter tubs, they do not usually get reclaimed because most recyclers don’t know what materials were used to make them. If a package made from polystyrene or PVC was thrown into a recycling process, it could severely contaminate the recycling stream.

How About Those Plastic Caps?

The next time you walk around the block, take a look in the gutters—you will probably find a bottle cap or two. Most communities ask that you remove plastic caps from bottles before recycling. There are two reasons for this: one, they consider the caps to be contaminate or two, because they prevent the bottles from getting crushed in a truck or bale and therefore make the pickup routes or shipping less economical. Most plastic caps are made from polypropylene (PP). Recovered PP can be made into new caps or paint cans. If you are looking for a place to deposit your caps, Aveda has a program for collecting plastic bottle caps through school programs. It began as an effort to keep the caps out of waste streams, lakes, rivers and oceans, and addresses the fact that caps on our beaches have become one of the newest litter issues. If you want to learn how you can participate, visit www.aveda.com.

How About Paper?

The good news is that most paper gets recycled. This includes paper inserts, folding cartons, setup boxes and corrugated boxes. As a matter of fact, corrugated boxes are recycled at rates of 80% or better because of business-to-business opportunity created by the value of the material. There is a great plant on Staten Island where all of New York City’s residential recycled paper goes in one end and new pizza boxes come out the other. The one thing that you need to know about paper products however, is that if the paper is laminated with plastic film or silver or gold foil, the recyclers won’t take it. There are many print inks and processes today that look a lot like foil or Mylar and offer recyclable solutions to paper board cartons. The other contaminant is wax coatings on corrugated boxes. The good news is that great strides have been made in the food service industry to eliminate this wax coating.

Aluminum and Steel

Steel has always maintained a healthy recycling market. Steel recycling includes metal bottle caps, tin cans, tinplate makeup pans and more. The advantage of tin plate steel recycling is that it can be magnetically separated and therefore easy for recyclers to access. Steel cans are also good candidates for recycling—except for aerosol cans, which are often handled separately by your community recycler.

Aluminum cans are, of course, highly recyclable, so your soda or beer can should go into the recycling bin. But what about the tiny containers that hold makeup? Unfortunately, aluminum components comprised in fragrance or lipstick caps are lined with plastic parts that make them hard to currently reclaim.In today’s market, there really isn’t a good revenue opportunity for these materials. Some brands have set up recycling at the store level to get these containers back from consumers so they can recycle them. One such program is the “Return to Origins” program organized by the Origins brand. It allows for any cosmetic container from any brand to be brought to an Origins’ counter for recycling or energy recovery.

Did We Talk about Glass?

Glass has always been very recyclable.It is used in many of the amber bottles and jars in the food industry today. Glass can be effectively separated at a recycling center because of its weight. The issue I am finding with glass recycling today is that it is co-mingled with other materials. There is a new (what I find to be annoying) trend called Single Stream Recycling, which was created to get more material to the recycling centers. The industry is allowing consumers to throw all recyclable materials into one bin. By the time it goes through the recycling process, it has broken into particles so fine that it is only good for drainage or road bedding. Another drawback is that the particles of glass contaminate other plastics, metals and paper. What creates the problem for people who work with recycled content, is that the quality of the material coming our way is much poorer.

In Europe, materials are separated into three streams: paper, glass and plastic/metal containers. Many U.S. communities now separate glass into clear, amber, and green since those colors are actually used in new packaging.If you have a local drop-off center, use it. This will preserve the value of the glass and keep it from contaminating the rest of the recycled materials.

You should now know more than you ever really wanted to know about recycling. However, if you find yourself wondering what to toss in the recycle bin and what to toss in the garbage, I’ll leave you with my personal credo—if in doubt, recycle. Now, go impress your friends and family.