I know this may be a bit of a silly question but I haven’t actually been able to find any info regarding a straight answer online.
In many places I have lived in the UK (except London) you are required to wash all of your recycling out or they will throw the whole bag away as rubbish at the recycling plant.
My question is, when we use the recycling bins everywhere in cities or towns in the UK, these are obviously not washed out, as most people are consuming whatever it is on the fly, so does this mean all of the recycling in these bins are thrown away?
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I never understood this, surely ‘washed’ is a spectrum?
If we were to have a washing competition, our washed items may not be exactly the same level of cleanliness.
So do the workers have some sort of scale they abide by?
It’s all very vague and non-committal because that’s the reality of it. It gets handed to waste management companies who, depending on their current loads, costs, weather, general mood, either separate and recycle it all or just send it in a boat to Indonesia to be dumped in the sea.
What did the council say when you contacted them about it?
Most London recycling is collected comingled, and then sorting at MRFs (pronounced murfs), which is a mixture of mechanical and human sorting.
The bin contents will be more contaminated than household stuff but key items like metal and glass will be retrieved.
More of the paper and card probably ends up being composted with biodegradable waste as only clean paper really has a market – the main aim of mixed paper/cardboard recycling is to divert biodegradable waste from landfill.
Council websites usually have links to cool videos showing what happens to waste (and MRFs may have open days if.you care that much).
We don’t have to wash our out. All recycling centres wash everything anything. It does seem like an awful waste of water for them to be getting washed twice. Especially when we had hose pipe bans in parts of the UK last year. I’d rather water my plants keeping them alive to feed the bees than wash out a tin
Depends on the council and who they hae to deal with it
some of it is recycled, some is landfill, some is sent overseas to put the responsibility on someone else, which normally is just landfill.
Land fills.