Solving the recycling riddle: Everything you need to know about your bins

Des Crinion, consultant to Panda Irish Packaging Recycling with an iron and a side mirror from a car - just two of thousands of items that should not be, but were, included in household recycling bags collected by Panda Recycling. Pic: Moya Nolan

Bins can be bamboozling. Most of us have three — rubbish, recycling and compost — and you can sometimes find yourself pondering whether a tea bag goes in the compost, or a used pizza box in the recycling.

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And it's not just what each bin's for. Other essential questions are: Where does it all end up? Are we doing it right? Could we do better? So here's the low-down:

Recycle bin:

Paper and cardboard, tins, cans, and all plastic packaging, whether rigid or soft (any plastic you can scrunch in your hand) are accepted in your recycle bin.

Clean, loose, and dry should be your mantra when it comes to recycling, says Des Crinion, chairman of the Irish Waste Management Association (IWMA) and a consultant to Panda/Greenstar.

"If I said ‘empty your recycle bin on your kitchen floor’, would you be happy to do it or would you be aghast? If you’re happy I can [easily] sort your recycling."

Recycling is sorted by size, shape, density, and — while the industry has hundreds of people who hand-sort — much is done by machines.

Rotating screens separate out big pieces of cardboard, slightly smaller screens take out newspapers/magazines, and then it's the turn of the 3Ds (bottles, cans).

Plastic drinks bottles are sorted according to whether they’re clear (they’re melted down for clear plastic), coloured (can only be used for black plastic), or white milk bottles – "much easier to recycle than Tetra Pak cartons, which have a plastic lid, fibre on the inside and other elements, it's quite a complex package," says Crinion. Coloured HDPE bottles — e.g. those containing shampoo/detergent/bleach — are then separated out, followed by pots/tubs/trays.

So where does it all go? Crinion explains: "Cardboard and paper go to paper mills to be made back into paper. It's exported to mainland Europe, Turkey, and India. Plastic film is recycled in the UK and in continental Europe. Steel cans go to Spain, where they’re melted down into steel. Aluminum goes to the UK, US, and continental Europe and is made into aluminum cans.

"All plastics are sent to continental Europe and recycled back into bottles. But it's much easier to make it into a non-food use, e.g. wheelbarrows, buckets, flower pots, water pipes — any plastic-made item."

But are we doing our recycling right? Not all of us — and not all the time, says Crinion.

"In winter we get a lot of ashes from the fire. In summer we get garden clippings and hedge trimmings. The other really bad one is used nappies. You also find crazy things like wiper blades, pots, and pans — at this time of year people will throw in their winter wardrobe."

Unacceptable items aside, some of us also — trying to be space-efficient — put our drinks cans into our cereal boxes. Don't, says Crinion. "It makes it more difficult for us to sort."

Some good news, though, is that 2019-20 figures show a rise in recycling from 37% to 41%.

And what about that hard-to-recycle packaging?

"Technically everything's recyclable – but only materials that have a value will be recycled by municipal systems," says Stephen Clarke, head of communications at TerraCycle, a company that devises sustainability solutions and operates first-of-their-kind platforms in recycling, recycled materials, and reuse — TerraCycle works across 21 countries.

Clarke says hard-to-recycle packaging includes anything considered complex to recycle. "Products made from multiple materials usually fall into this bracket [because] these materials need to be separated in order to be recycled. Examples are toothbrushes, pens, medicine blister packs, beauty products/packaging, such as those with pumps/caps."

TerraCycle has five free consumer recycling programmes in Ireland:

All — apart from RB Hygiene Home – are accepting new public locations.

TerraCycle has also launched its ‘paid-for zero waste box’ recycling solution in Ireland.

These boxes let you recycle items like beauty products/packaging, coffee pods, contact lenses, crisp/snack packets, toothbrushes, and toothpaste tubes.

Compost (brown) bin:

"The most important thing we can do environmentally is to have a brown bin — it keeps food waste away from general waste, making it much more recyclable," says IWMA secretary Conor Walsh.

The compost bin is for food waste, e.g. peelings/shells/food scraps/leftovers, as well as tea bags ("some tea bags have plastic in them – I’d like this to be biodegradable plastic", says Walsh) and garden waste/hedge clippings.

Walsh says the 240-litre compost bin is ideal if you’ve lots of garden waste as well as food waste. If brown bin contents are a mix of food and garden waste, it's perfect for making compost.

"This is a soil enhancer and replaces products made from peat. That's obviously good — we don't want to be extracting peat from bogs."

Where food is the only material in the compost bin, it goes for anaerobic digestion.

"From this, we get biogas, which is used to make electricity. It can be converted to a biomethane, suitable for injection into the national gas grid. This replaces natural gas, which has a climate impact — whereas biomethane is carbon-neutral," says Walsh.

In Ireland, 70% of households have a brown bin. In any conglomeration with a population of 500 or more, people are entitled to a compost bin and it's then illegal to put food waste in any other bin.

Walsh explains that from the end of 2023 everybody, including those in rural areas, will be entitled to a compost bin, and therefore legally obliged to only put food waste in this bin.

But what about recently-announced brown bin charges? Financial advisor and former chair of Price Monitoring Group Frank Conway says brown bins were originally intended to facilitate households separating materials that would contaminate their rubbish bin.

"People see it as doing a favour for the waste companies — food waste isn't contaminating tradeable recycling items. With this [brown bin] charge, they might say ‘I’m doing something for the circular economy and there's nothing in it for me — why am I doing it?’"

And as the brown bin must be put out frequently to manage decomposing waste, you could end up paying a lot. "It will go against the grain of what people want — service reliability and price predictability," says Conway.

"Something should be given back to households who are doing the right thing — for example, their compost picked up with their [rubbish] bin at no extra charge. It should be about waste management and the circular economy— not about charges."

Rubbish bin:

Nationally, we create 1.8 tons of household waste a year, that's 372 kilos per person.

"If you’re recycling and composting, very little should go into the rubbish bin, just hair cuttings, floor sweepings, contaminated plastic or paper, used sanitary products," says Crinion.

General waste is put through a sieve-like machine called a trommel.

"The fine/small material drops out. This tends to be organic food waste and is used in anaerobic digestion. What remains after the gas has been taken out of the food waste goes to landfill. The other material left in the bin is burnt in one of Ireland's two incinerators," says Crinion, adding that many companies will take steel and aluminum out of the general waste bin for recycling.

"But it's more difficult because it's dirty." The bottom line on the rubbish bin? Don't throw good (recyclable) material into it.

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Solving the recycling riddle: Everything you need to know about your bins