Food Scraps Don’t Belong in the Recycling

dirty food containers

10-6-2019

Is your jar half-full of salsa? Does your can still have food in it? Don’t toss them in the recycling! Food scraps contaminate the recycling process.

When food scraps get into your recycling, they make recyclables less clean and less valuable. Food can get stuck in sorting equipment, forcing workers to stop the sorting line to clean it up. Food can also seep into paper products, making the fibers too weak to be recycled — liquids, sticky residue and leftover grease, especially.

Long story short: A batch of food-contaminated recycling can quickly end up in the landfill.

What can you do? Dispose of food waste in your green waste cart or kitchen composter, before rinsing the container and recycling it. If it’s something really sticky or oily, such as nut butter, honey or mayonnaise, go ahead and give the container a quick scrub.

Afterwards, if a container is really wet, try to let it dry before tossing it in with other recyclables. That way, any paper that’s being recycled will stay dry, too.