During your latest shopping trip, you noticed that the plastic bags have a recycling symbol. If it has the recycling symbol, you can recycle it in your curbside container, right? The answer is that many items people believe are recyclable actually contaminate recycling loads.
Wishcycling is the practice of recycling items that aren’t accepted at the local material recovery facility (MRF). Just because something has a recycling symbol doesn’t mean it’s accepted. If you recycle it, you risk contaminating an entire load. Suddenly, everything in that load of recyclables goes to the landfill.
Understand How Recycling Is Processed at a Material Recovery Facility (MRF)
Recycling starts with the items you consume and then send to recycling. Curbside recycling often focuses on metal cans from vegetables, fruits, and soups, glass jars and bottles, and #1, #2, and #5 plastics.
Once your hauler picks it up, it goes to an MRF. Trucks tip the entire load of recyclables onto the floor, where it waits to go to a conveyor belt. As it travels up a conveyor belt, workers remove materials that cannot be recycled and move them to bins for the landfill.
Materials are then sorted by size, shape, and material type. Larger items are removed, while others pass over screens that sort them by size. Magnets extract metals from the materials. Optical equipment sorts plastics by type. Glass is crushed so it falls through the screens. Workers continue to monitor the conveyors and remove contaminants like plastic bags.
Once materials are sorted, they’re compressed into rectangular bales that are sold to reclaimers, who further sort and process the recycled materials for reuse. Recyclers:
- Sort the baled recyclables by type and remove any “wish” recyclables that got through other screenings.
- Grind the materials into smaller pieces.
- Wash those small pieces to remove dirt, adhesives, and other materials.
- Move the materials to a float/sink tank where they’re separated by type of plastic.
- Rinse and dry the sorted materials.
- Remove any delaminated particles.
- Put food packaging materials through a decontamination process to kill bacteria or germs following USDA protocol.
- Melt the materials down and extrude them into pellets.
For the types of plastics, these are the different materials and what they’re used for.
- #1 – Polyethylene terephthalate (PET): PET is simple to recycle in curbside bins. It’s used to make soda and water bottles, condiment containers, mouthwash bottles, and many other clear bottles. The recycled materials are used to make carpeting, food containers, tote bags, and some clothing.
- #2 – High-density polyethylene (HDPE): One of the easiest plastics to recycle, HDPE is used to make milk jugs, hair and skin care bottles, and juice bottles. It’s recycled into cleaner and shampoo bottles, floor tiles, and plastic lumber.
- #3 – Polyvinyl chloride (PVC): PVC isn’t easy to recycle because it contains chlorine. It’s found in piping, vinyl siding, and wire jacketing. If a company is willing to reuse it, it’s used to make decking, mud flaps, and plastic speed bumps.
- #4 – Low-density polyethylene (LDPE): Many plastic bags are made from LDPE and aren’t recyclable in curbside bins. However, they can be recycled if they’re clean and dry. Bring them to your local grocery store and place them in plastic film recycling bins, often located in bottle redemption areas or store lobbies. They can be turned into plastic lumber, shipping envelopes, and trash cans.
- #5 – Polypropylene (PP): This is one of the plastics commonly accepted in curbside recycling bins. It’s used to make yogurt containers and medicine bottles. It can be recycled into items such as brushes, directional lights, and ice/snow scrapers.
- #6 – Polystyrene (PS): Most PS comes from Styrofoam egg containers, meat trays, or packaging peanuts. It can also be a firm container, such as a CD case. It can be turned into insulation, foam packaging, and carry-out containers.
- #7 – Other: This category includes polycarbonate and polylactic acid. Items range from large 5-gallon water bottles to DVD cases, sunglasses, and clear plastic cutlery. Although it can be recycled into products such as plastic lumber, it requires special handling.
The Problem With Wishcycling
When too many items are pulled from a recycling line, or when a partially empty condiment bottle goes into the recycling stream and leaks its contents onto other recyclables and the conveyor, those items are pulled and sent to landfills.
It might not seem that bad to put your unrinsed peanut butter jar in the recycling bin, but the oils smear onto other recyclables and the conveyor belt. Now, a batch of recyclables is heading to the landfill. Plus, workers must stop, clear the line, and wash everything before restarting the line. It slows everything down.
There are additional issues. In a landfill, a plastic bag takes decades to decompose. Plastic bottles take about 450 years. Glass never truly breaks down; it returns to materials like sand, but that process takes upward of 1 million years. An aluminum can takes around 250 years to break down.
While these items slowly break down, microplastics enter the soil, water, and air. Metal cans leach metals into the groundwater and soil. It’s not ideal and could harm generations hundreds or thousands of years from now.
China’s Operation National Sword
Until 2017, many U.S. recyclables went to China for processing. Operation National Sword ended that. Starting in 2018, 24 categories of waste and recycling products were banned from going to China for processing. That meant the U.S. suddenly had to find other places to recycle, creating backlogs and leading to plastic bag bans and fees to cover the cost of recycling.
Even with plastic bag bans and new fees, over 23% of plastics that could have been recycled ended up in landfills. One approach to keeping items out of landfills is to establish extended producer responsibility laws. Instead of consumers paying for higher recycling costs, producers would have to create local recycling programs or agree to take back items to prevent them from going to landfills.
Better Ways to Ensure Items Don’t End Up in a Landfill
Doing your part is one of the best ways to stop wishcycling. If you’re not 100% certain that an item is recyclable in your district, check. It’s better to throw one item out than risk an entire truckload.
Donate as much as you can. If you have glass food containers without lids, see if anyone wants them to use for upcycling projects like painted planters or bird feeders. Donate items you no longer need, such as mismatched plates, to a charity store like Goodwill or Habitat for Humanity’s Restore.
Recycle Nation’s searchable guide makes it easy to find how or where to recycle specific items. Instead of putting black plastic in your curbside recycling container, check whether it’s accepted locally. If it’s not, our guide often lists drop-off locations that accept it. Enter the item and your ZIP code to get answers in seconds.
