With 25 million bottles thrown daily in France, the rules of recycling question. Many are mistaken and make the wrong gesture.
Recycling is in progress in France. With a sorting rate from 40% in 2010 to 50% in 2020, the government Note of significant progress in the municipal waste sector thanks to the development of collection. To continue on this path, The law of February 10, 2020relating to the fight against waste and the circular economy, also provides for the end of single -use plastics by 2040 in France.
If measures are taken to induce changes in consumption and production methods, certain recycling habits remain less obvious than it seems. And with 345 million tonnes (MT) of waste produced in France in 2022, this question is more relevant than ever.
Many errors are made in recycling, but one of the most common undoubtedly concerns plastic bottles. Should we roll them or fold them before throwing them in the sorting bin? A few recommendations should be followed so as not to harm recycling, reports West France. But beware of the bad gesture that amounts to crushing the bottles!
According to The company specializing in Citeo recycling“The bottle can be sorted without being compacted”, but if you choose to crush it to save space, be careful, you have to make “a moderate compaction, done by hand”. And for good reason: if the treatment of our waste in sorting centers is widely automated, the machines are not all equal when distinguishing waste.
“After a passage in the pre-TRI cabin, the waste goes into a record screen. They are then directed in the cabin of flat body or in those of hollow bodies. A bottle which is crushed, not even completely flat, is then analyzed as a flat body and bet with papers and boxes,” explained Pascal Loiselle, director of the Recover Association, in La Voix du Nord.
Concretely, crushing a bottle before throwing it can promote machine errors and have consequences for the work of human sorting agents. And if you had doubts about plastic caps, know that they are fully recyclable. This is why, they must be revised on the empty bottle to prevent them from being forgotten by the sorting chain because of their small size. Industrialists have also changed their packaging by fixing the cap to the bottle to respond to this problem.