Throwing an item made of mixed but otherwise recyclable materials into the rubbish always feels a little bit wrong. Whether it’s pens, empty bottles of cleaning products, coffee pods or blister packs, recycling solutions do exist – they’re just not in your kerbside bin.
Blister packs
The packaging that medication comes in presents mainstream recyclers with a challenge, as the combination of plastic and foil prevents them from sitting in a single recycling stream. This means an enormous number of resources are sent to landfill, especially by hospitals, nursing homes and medical centres.
Luckily there are a few companies that have cracked the code on blister pack recycling and offer collection points or mail-in services for empty packs.
Pharmacycle has more than 850 collection points around Australia where empty blister packs can be dropped off, including pharmacies and healthcare providers. Alternatively, you can order a prepaid satchel and post your blister packs to their processing facility in Sydney.
Global recycling company TerraCycle offers a similar service. You can order an Empty Blister Packs Zero Waste Box online (although at $187 for a large box, this service is better suited to a communal or office environment) and, once it’s full, ship it back to TerraCycle for processing. Northern Territory residents can drop off blister packs to any participating pharmacy.
“When we collect blister packs, the first thing we do is shred them and clean off any residual pharmaceutical content that may be there,” says Tom Szaky, the CEO of TerraCycle. “Then we separate the plastic from the aluminium.”
The aluminium is melted down and the plastic is processed into pellets. The resulting materials are sold to manufacturers who turn them into new products.
Pens
Pens – which are typically made from a combination of metal or plastic cases, tubes for ink, metal springs and nibs, and rubber grips – are another challenging item to recycle.
Local pick-up service RecycleSmart accepts both plastic and metal pens in their collections of miscellaneous hard-to-recycle items. They operate around New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland and also offer services in Perth, Adelaide, Canberra and Hobart.
TerraCycle offers a mail-in service on pens alongside drop-off points in partnership with Bic and Officeworks. The service accepts not only pens but also a range of other products including highlighters, correction fluid, markers and mechanical pencils.
When the pens arrive at TerraCycle’s processing facility they are manually sorted and shredded, and all materials are separated and processed into raw materials that can be used for new products.
Cleaning products
“If you look at most of your cleaning products, the actual bottle is made from one type of plastic so it can go in your kerbside recycling bin,” says Eugénie Alonzo, the marketing manager of RecycleSmart. “But spray bottles that have a pump are trickier because there’s a number of different plastics and even a bit of metal with the actual pump.”
She suggests removing this from the rest of the bottle and putting it aside with your other hard-to-recycle materials.
When the pumps arrive at RecycleSmart’s processing facility, they are put through a shredder and the components are separated, so that, similar to blister packs and pens, the plastic and metal can be put back into their individual recycling streams.
TerraCycle also offers a recycling program for cleaning products either via mail or in-store drop-off points.
Coffee pods
Coffee pods present a particular challenge to recyclers because they are a combination of organic material (the coffee) and some kind of casing, whether that’s aluminium, plastic or a hybrid of the two.
Nespresso offers a free recycling program that accepts all brands of aluminium coffee capsules. You can either drop them to a participating Nespresso store, florist or garden centre, use a bulk recycling box for a workplace or purchase an Australia Post satchel for $5 and return it through the mail once it’s full.
TerraCycle has two tiers of programs for recycling coffee pods. The first one involves ordering a Zero Waste Box for large quantities, so it is better suited to an office or commercial environment. It accepts aluminium pods and pods that are a combination of plastic and aluminium (but not compostable or biodegradable pods). The second is a free recycling program for specific brands including L’or, Moccona, Illy, Campos, Jed’s, Nescafé and Lavazza. RecycleSmart also accepts aluminium capsules in their waste collections but ask that these are in a separate plastic bag to the rest of the waste being disposed of.
Balloons
Balloons are not biodegradable and can be environmental hazards if they’re not disposed of correctly. Since they are typically made of latex or foil, they don’t belong in your kerbside recycling bin. In a collaboration with Amscan, TerraCycle offers a free balloon recycling service on all brands of latex and foil balloons.
At their processing facility, the balloons are sorted by material type and processed. “Balloons are basically vulcanised rubber,” says Szaky. “Once it’s vulcanised, you can’t melt it again, so it is pulverised into a powder that goes really well into flooring applications or specialty applications, like the grit on a glove or something along those lines.” The foil balloons are turned into metal items like springs, screws and bolts.
