How to recycle that pretty holiday paper
Ribbons, bows, glitter are no-nos in effort to keep recycling out of landfills
SAN FRANCISCO – There’s more to recycling your Christmas paper than stuffing everything into a big blue bin.
U.S. trash companies are increasingly having to send what would have been waste-paper recycling to landfills after China cracked down on Americans’ sloppy recycling habits. It turns out that the glue on bows, the glitter dusting your fancy wrapping paper and miles of ribbons — not to mention dirty pizza boxes and plastic grocery bags — clog the process of turning waste paper into new paper and cardboard.
It has gotten so bad that starting Jan. 1, China is setting new limits on the contamination it will allow in the mixed paper bales American trash companies ship there for recycling. “They’ve starting getting more rigorous, even tearing open bales at customs,” said Chaz Miller, policy director for the National Waste & Recycling Association.
If China takes less of America’s used paper, our trash rates will likely rise, since selling that waste often subsidizes the cost of our neighborhood pickup.
Here’s the right way to clean up from Christmas, according to recycling experts.
Bows
As pretty as they make a package, the plastic-paper composite of most bows doesn’t work when you’re trying to create cardboard. Add in the glue that sticks them to the gift, and they’re a no-no in the recycling bin.
“I don’t know of any paper mill in the United States that would want a bow in their incoming bales,” Miller said.
The good news is that they’re probably the easiest Christmas item to reuse rather than recycle.
Even if they lose their stickiness, a bit of tape makes them as good as new.
During the unwrapping, keep a paper grocery bag next to you and play “can you dunk it?” with the bows that come off the presents.
You may never need to buy a bag of bows again. When they’re truly dead, trash them.
Wrapping paper
Yes, you can recycle Christmas wrapping paper — unless it’s metallic, has glitter or has velvety flocking on it. “Plain wrapping paper is totally recyclable,” said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Recology, a San Francisco-based recycling company that operates in California, Oregon and Washington state.
And don’t worry about getting all the tape off before you toss it in the bin.
“Tape’s OK,” he said.
Ribbons
You wouldn’t think shiny curls of ribbon would strike fear into the heart of recycling plant managers, but they do. A bow can go through the entire system and be screened out by the pulping equipment. Ribbons, on the other hand, are insidious.
Facilities that accept commingled recyclables and sort out the cardboard use a large piece of equipment called disc screens, or sets of spinning discs with spaces in between. Large flat items such as cardboard are carried up and over the screen, while smaller items fall through the spaces between the discs. Unfortunately, ribbons (as well as plastic bags, twine and anything else that’s long and stringy) end up wrapping around the spinning shafts that hold the discs. It’s kind of like hair wrapping around the roller brush of a vacuum cleaner.