How To Dispose of Plastic Properly

Produce bags, pet waste bags, plastic wrapping, garbage bags, and many many more. Sound Familiar? What is the best way to dispose of all the plastic in our lives? 

Most mixed recycling services do not want any type of plastic bag included in paper, plastic and glass recycle because this can cause expansive problems at the recycling facility. Plastic bags and other flexible filmy plastics (IE: wrapping) can wrap around the equipment. This interferes with the efficient sorting and occasionally requires workers to shut down equipment, making the process far less efficient. 

So, dump your contents in the bin alone and keep the plastic bag separate. 

Save your plastic bag for re-use or recycle it at separate drop-off points where plastic bags are accepted. If neither option is available to you, discard it in your garbage. Heres why: If you send plastic bags and other filmy plastics with your other recyclables, it's likely that the workers will pull it out and discard it as garbage anyways. Which makes this whole process much longer and as we mentioned above, riskier for the machinery. Also, "Bagged recyclable in plastic bags are pulled off the line. Closed plastic bags with items inside are considered contamination." It's best to always check with your local recycle provider to find out what they prefer. Make it easy on them and try to recycle properly when possible.

Another idea is to check with your local supermarket and other local businesses to see if they collect your single-use plastic bags for recycling. But, as much as you can, brig your own re-usable bag and opt out of a single use plastic. 

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