Throwing your black take-out containers in the recycling bin? Unfortunately, there’s a chance they’re ending up in our landfills, despite your efforts.
We often think of our recycling bin as a universal catch-all for all our plastic materials (someone will sort it, right?). Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case with all things made of black plastic, the Jan Brady of recyclable materials.
In the recycling industry, black plastic is notoriously difficult to recycle because of its colour. Scanners at recycling facilities reflect light via infrared cameras in order to distinguish one plastic material from another. Because black plastic absorbs light rather than reflecting it, it goes unsorted and winds up in landfills by accident.
Recycling black plastic can also become an incredibly costly process, and because it can only be recycled into other black plastic materials, unlike plastics of other colours, it doesn’t always justify the effort into sorting that’s necessary.
What products are we talking about exactly? Well, just about anything with carbon black, the pigment used in black plastics for its durability. Think about those take-out sushi trays or DVD cases or coffee cup lids.
Worse, this plastic pollution presents a number of environmental and possible consumer health problems. In the U.K., electronic waste is used to make black plastic (yep). A 2018 study by U.K. researchers found that toxic chemicals, like lead, may contaminate this plastic, posing an enormous health risk when recycled into food containers.
I spoke to a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Sanitation who noted that New York does typically accept rigid plastics, but did not specifically name black plastic (we’ve asked for clarification, and will update if we get a response).
[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/09/how-to-recycle-toothbrushes-and-toothpaste-tubes-if-you-insist/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/jg3hzaozppcbyyvsaxct.jpg” title=”How To Recycle Toothbrushes And Toothpaste Tubes, If You Insist” excerpt=”Depending on your local recycling center, you can’t toss your toothbrush into the recycling bin. Well you can, but you’ll just be adding trash for the workers to pick out. And you shouldn’t throw your toothpaste tube in the bin either. But you can mail them to a specialised recycling center for free, with a program from Colgate and TerraCycle.”]
So, what can you do to help curb the problem of black plastic? It goes without saying, but using fewer black plastic materials (and plastic in general) is the best way to do your part. Contact your kerbside recycling program by doing a web search of your area’s local program and specifically asking if they accept black plastic (and what process is used to achieve that), so you can help a local facility that you’ll be sure will send your plastics to the right place.
And, of course, if you’re looking to recycle a take-out container, be sure to rinse it out with water adequately before handing it over to your kerbside program.
Comments
6 responses to “Think Twice Before Recycling Black Plastic”
It doesn’t matter in Australia what you toss in the ‘recycling’ anyway, it mostly goes to landfill because we don’t really have a recycling industry to speak of. Greens councillors and parliamentarians across the country have been patting themselves on the back for years saying “look how green we are” just because they arranged trucks to take the ‘recycling” away, without ever asking themselves what happened to it next, which is dumped, stockpiled dangerously or shipped to a 3rd world country to dump. Dumb greens.
Pretty sure that’s misinformation. There are plenty of recycling activities going on. And there are even concerns (at least in QLD) that the introduction of refunds on drink bottles would cut into local council revenues because they actively sell the recycled materials to recyclers.
I have a question, regarding this: Don’t recyclables get washed as part of the recycling process? If so, pre-washing them at home does nothing but contribute to the amount of water used in recycling a single piece of plastic.
Correctamongo. ABC’s Four Corners reported on this 3 years ago; do not waste water washing. Do not even bother to wash out the peanut butter jar. It all gets washed.
Not putting black plastic in the recycling bin just because it *might* get mis-sorted at the facility and end up in landfill is ridiculous and terrible advice. Put it in the recycling where it belongs. Most black plastic I’ve seen has the recycling logo on it anyway.
Absolutely, if there’s a chance it’ll be recycled versus definitely going into landfill then we should still take the chance it’d be recycled. The only reason I could see *not* to recycle it would be if it somehow contaminated an entire load of recycling which had to be dumped, but that’s not the case.