I am still confused about what to do with certain plastic containers such as the ones that hold food when you buy them from a grocery store such as the ones with meat or pasta. They aren't PET so I can't put them with the PET bottles so what should I do with them? I didn't see it on the calendar/instructions they gave me here.

Also, what about the paper cartons for juice or milk? Trash them?

Thanks!

Perhaps someone else will know better, but from what I've learned these are just trash! Just flatten them so they take up less room in the garbage.

It may depend on where you are. I guess you mean the cardboard based milk and juice containers. Here in Schwyz you trash all that stuff.

D

Quite easy. PET milk and drink bottles go in their respective containers at the place of sale, glass and metal in the municipal containers, other food packaging goes in the dustbin (which is actually a bag). You probably call it trash, but I am linguistically damaged by a long stay on some island off the coast of France ;-)

Clear?

Have fun

Martin

What about those plastic containers that hold chicken or the ones you can buy pastas or sliced meat in? They have a little icon on the back that looks like two arrows, I thought this meant they could be recycled...

I see....thought we'd be able to recycle more...what a bummer!

If it makes you feel any better, what's not recycled is burnt to produce electricity, which means it's not using coal, gas or oil. Ok, so the plastic generally comes from oil, but it's had a use first. The advantage of burning rubbish is that you're not using another fuel source for power while tons of stuff gently rots in a landfill, giving off methane and CO2 as it does so while the other fuel source also gives off CO2.
As far as we were told, you can't recycle a lot of the milk containers, or that was at least the mpression that my wife got from a rather irate Co-op worker as she was piling the things into the recycling bin.

So much for a green country, we travel over the border (90 minutes away) to France every 6 weeks or so and do a monthly shop. Every French village has a recycle point which takes tetra pak, cartons, plastic etc. We come back with a load of shopping and generally have a good day out.

I cannot understand why CH doesn't seperate more packaging or have something similar to the German Gelbe Sac, where everything like yogurt, margarine pots etc are collected.

Andy

I guess in a way, it depends on the cost of recycling the material and also whterh there's a market for it as a recycled commodity. I you've got something like old plastic meat containers, they're going to have to be washed and made sterile before you can melt them down again for reuse and it may well be cheaper to make them new and burn the old ones. As important as it is to recycle, the companies involved at each step are still more likely to care about making a profit first.

I agree, I do not know what to do with so much of the stuff that I have that can certainly be recycled. What about the large detergent bottles and such? I used to just throw everything in one "recycling" section of the trash in the US. There were people paid to sort all of the recycled stuff out into different categories.

This means they are made of recycled materials.

More than paper, cardboard, PET, glass, tins, batteries, coffee capsules, hard plastic, wood, electronics, aluminum, steel????
I thought this covered just about anything.
As far as the Tetra packs, they can go in the cardboard.

BTW, PET and PET2 are not the same.

That's absolutely correct, and they do separate a bit more before going to the huge ovens. There are several burning stages, and you can see how well these places work by the tall chimney and what comes out of it: almost pure water steam. Any other combustion residue gets filtered out so nothing (or as little as possible) is released to the atmosphere. The heat produced by the combustion of all this residue is used to heat water (which can be used for heating, etc).

Or at least that's what they explained during the plant tour I attended in my city about 1 year ago...in Swiss German, of course. I did miss a huge chunk of if, but the pointing and the signs said a lot.

[quote=PCDesigns;93940]As far as the Tetra packs, they can go in the cardboard.quote]

Not in Kanton Bern they can't & that also extends to washing powder cartons. Is to do with the plastic content, which screws with the recycling process.

What about cans? Not the aluminum, but the ones that hold tomato sauce (or in the U.S. vegetables )

see the Similar threads below - many questions might've already been answered

[quote=Polorise;93977] well how about that, all this time......... (nobody noticed right?)

Some towns collect them separately, some do not. You'll have to look at the declaration on the recycling containers.

I've seen Konservendosen bins in just about every Sammelnplatz. That's where you're supposed to half-crush and dispose of clean tin cans (they used to ask that you remove the labels, although not anymore in my city).

You know...now that I've looked again...it seems Bern does ask that you deposit them with the Aluminum cans. http://www.bern.ch/leben_in_bern/woh...%202007%20engl

Now I just have to figure out how to crush the darn thing..the slot is so small in the bin!