Does it make sense to recycle messy small plastic items such as yogurt pots, given that householders use comparatively large amounts of warm water to rinse them?
鈥� It is a good idea to collect this material, especially as some of the polymers in them are quite valuable once recycled. The advice that we at the Waste and Resources Action Programme give consumers is to quickly rinse these items to remove any food residues 鈥� they do not need to be squeaky clean. You could save them to do after you鈥檝e done all the washing up and use the dishwater.
WRAP (the organisation behind , the national recycling campaign for England)
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鈥� As you point out, the immediate costs are hard to justify, and no sensible householder will waste more resources on such a task than the items are worth.
However, there is more to the equation than just how much plastic, or indeed, glass or metal one can recycle. A good deal of energy went into making the polymer or metal, including its sheer fuel value in some cases, so the equation must allow for the often greater cost of destroying dirty, unsegregated waste rather than recycling clean, sorted waste.
Disposal may be more expensive than creating a new item, and lays the burden on future generations.
鈥淧lastic in landfills might last for millennia, leaking and belching toxic materials鈥�
People are rightly concerned about nuclear waste, and, of course, it has great potential hazards 鈥� but much domestic waste in the form of plastic also lasts a long time, especially where large quantities accumulate. In Florida, the most prominent landscape features I saw were landfills and, if not removed, they might last for millennia, leaking and belching toxic materials, and wasting resources for the foreseeable future.
Unlike the concentrated resources that a householder鈥檚 rinsed yogurt pots and drinks cans represent, a lot of domestic waste is too diffuse for most forms of economical recycling.
Jon Richfield, Somerset West, South Africa
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