Our city won’t recycle the plastic dinner trays marked Recycle 2. They say they are somehow not compatible with Recycle 2 bottles.
If they aren’t the same, what’s the point of the markings?
I believe it has to do with certain shapes and forms messing up the machines that shred the plastic. They get stuck and jam the machines.
The composition of the plastic may be the same, but if they are formed differently they can still cause practical problems.
I thought it was different types of plastics. (labeled 1 through 7)
where’s a materials engineer when you need one?
We have a similar restriction here. It may be because they can’t be sure it’s number 2 without reading the number. Someone has to go through the plastic and make sure it’s all #2. If there are similar looking trays made from #1 or #3 or whatever, that person would have to find and read the number on every tray. It’s not worth it, and easier just to tell people not to include them.
agreed…as Cecil has pointed out, the success of recycling will depend on economics
sorting through trash can be expensive
The funny thing here is that all our trash is hand sorted.
Our city doesn’t ask people to sort out recyclables.
All the trash (yard waste and construction waste streams excepted) is put on a conveyor belt and hand-sorted at the dump.
They did this because voluntary sorting by homeowners was not removing the mandated amounts of recyclables.
Everybody wins this way, since more is recycled, and far fewer people have to know the distinctions, like the one in my OP, but also that mirrors and plate glass are not the same as “glass”, and things like mercury batteries are more likely to be discovered before they hit the landfill.
Our City recycling program sends out a recycling magazine periodicaly. The latest issue is on recycling plastics, and they discuss this (in comic book form, no less 
). It seems there are two forms of #2 plastic. In the comic, the kind used in bottles (where the neck is narrower than the body) is likened to bubblegum. These are formed by blowing the plastic, like blowing glass bottles or blowing bubbles. <Insert picture of funny looking plastic recycling superhero kid blowing a bottle shaped bubble with some bubblegum.> The plastic in #2 trays, cottage cheese containers, etc. is likened to chewing gum. These are formed by pressing the plastic, not by blowing, and the plastic formulation is different. Mixing them up in recycling is like mixing chewing gum and bubblegum, where you get gum which doesn’t blow bubbles. I don’t know if the blowable type messes up the pressable type, or if there just isn’t a market for the pressable type.
It’s true that plastics may be chemically the same, but incompatable. In addition to the plastic, any number of additives might be added to change the properties of the material. You can add fibers to increase strength, carbon black to darken the material, talc as a filler, dyes to change color, etc. Plus there are extruding agents, mold release agents, and other substances that make it easier to produce the object. Then you have to consider that the tray and/or the bottle might have a coating of a different material to make it more glossy, or more scratch-resistant. Any of these might present problems when recycling.
Our town is even “funnier”. There is a separate pickup for recycleables (with different containers for paper, aluminum, etc.) These are all dumped back together with the regular trash at the processing plant! We’ve got a big, fancy facility that then automatically extracts the desired recycleables (which I think is just aluminum, and perhaps one other material that I can’t remember).
Arjuna34
They’re all the same to me- right into the trash. Recycling sucks.