recycleanliness

[topaz]

[Poll #1112898][Poll #1112898]

Comments

[ghislaine.livejournal.com]

If Dwight answers, I predict he'll say "Dishwasher for everything!"

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

It varies for us on how we're feeling at the moment and what else is going on. We try and rinse things first.

[omegabeth.livejournal.com]

How clean I think they should be, or how clean they actually are? I'd bet that the person who deals with the recycling in the household might have a different answer than others...

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

What I meant is how clean you think they should be. The other members of your household can answer for themselves. :-)

[cruiser.livejournal.com]

My poll answer ignores the fact that they remain in the house for a while - in actual practice, my answer is "As clean as they need to be so they don't stink up the kitchen" so they wind up getting rinsed.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

We wash ours with soap and water, mostly because the recycling bin is in the kitchen and if they aren't properly cleaned, they start to smell bad after a day. Yes, we learned this from experience.

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

My reasoning exactly.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

Count in my vote.

[jss]

I'm confused. What do you mean by "recyclable food containers"?

If it's a reusable (like the multiple-use-until-destroyed plastic Gladware type), I'll at least rinse and possibly run through dishwasher, depending on what was in it. The recycle bin gets things like aluminum etc. cans, and plastic and glass bottles, plus the finally-destroyed plastic reusables (with a final rinse at most).

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I meant containers that are not intended to be reused.

[jss]

Ah, ok.

[roozle.livejournal.com]

Through sheer laziness on the dishwasher thing -- throw everything in, make decisions later.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I'm actually fine just rinsing things like juice containers, but anything that's likely to smell needs a real washing.

[maebeth.livejournal.com]

I actually take into account the day of the week. Recycling leaves Tues morning. So stuff on Tues to Friday gets cleaned pretty well.
THen I think.. well, its goign out Monday night...
And just rinse on Sat, Sun, Mon.

[dbang.livejournal.com]

I actually wondered about this this morning while rinsing out a recyclable item. Our transfer station says items should be "rinsed". What does that mean? Does that mean no food residue?

Because really, I need an answer between one and two. I do rinse, but "thoroughly" might be overstating the case. I rinse to the point where any remaining residue is likely to dry instead of rot.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

I grew up relying on well water, so I consider washing recycling containers to be an actively bad and wasteful act.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Huh. I had thought that unrinsed food containers would cause the entire batch of recyclables that they were in to be rejected, but I see no sign of that on the Somerville Recycling guide.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I'm confused by what the well has to do with it. I'm often *less* careful with our water than we probably should be, because our well gives us more-or-less unlimited (as long as we don't have a leak, or a power outage) water.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

Ah! Ours was definitely not unlimited.

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

or rather "make my Strong Manly Husband deal with all recyclables, food-oriented or otherwise, because I'm far too girly for that sort of thing." Well, also he's far more organized about collapsing boxes and stripping labels off things.

I don't feel a bit bad about this, since he makes me empty the mousetraps. We frequently have mousetraps which need emptying, what with one thing and another.

[arfur]

"Cursory rinsing" would be more like it.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

This is what the City of Cambridge says in its guidelines for recycling

• place rinsed containers loose in bin

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

I think it is "rinse well enough to not attract rodents to your house until recyclables are picked up, and then also well enough so that goop from your jam jar won't get onto the newspaper."

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Depends on what was in them. If a thorough rinsing gets them non-greasy and non-likely-to-smell, fine. If not, soap and water. (What is this "dishwsher" of which you speak?)

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

On the topic of recycling: how do you organize your recycling containers so they don't look uuuuugggggllyyyy and take up too much space? I'm puzzling over this right now.

[sulis-vt.livejournal.com]

Personally I got one of the wheeled totes the size of the curbside trash containers we are given. We now only have 1-2 bags of actual garbage for the 2 of us each week (unless doing massive house cleaning)...and FILL the blue container. Unfortunately Kitty Litter and Kitty Food Pouches are non-recyclable, or we'd have even less.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Our recycling corner in the kitchen is not terribly well organized and highly unaesthetic, so I cannot speak well to that. :-)

My parents have a lovely set of stacking plastic bins, each with an opening that allows you to drop stuff in even when another bin is stacked on top. I have no idea where they got them from (Containers Etc maybe? Hold Everything?) but would love something like that myself.