Can I recycle plastic jugs that have contained fertilizer?

February 22, 2019 4:10 PM

I go through a lot of fertilizer, so I mix and store several gallons at a time, in plastic (high-density polyethylene) milk jugs. I keep the jugs long enough (between 3 and 6 months) that by the time I replace them, the inside has often been covered by an unknown brown substance, which will mostly but not completely wipe off of the plastic.

I've been throwing away the containers without attempting to recycle them, on the assumption that whatever the brown stuff is (possibilities: reduced copper, rust or some other iron compound, algae, bacteria), it would change the properties of the plastic enough to make the container unrecyclable, plus the plastic may be absorbing small amounts of the fertilizer too for all I know. Now I'm questioning that assumption.

Can I put the used jugs in the recycling? Does the answer depend on what the brown stuff is? Would I have to cut them open and wipe out the brown stuff first? If you don't know, who would?

posted by Spathe Cadet to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

I’d recycle them with a quick rinse. You have very little control over how your domestic recycling is sold and handled by various parties, but any serious plastic recycling outfit has industrial ways to separate and purify metallic contaminants, as well as a wide rage of other common impurities. If recycling only happened for pure clean stock it would be easy and cheap!

Most of your fertilizer is organic stuff, involving your NPK nutrients, and also a bunch of C. None of that is way of line for platic recycling.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:22 PM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: When in doubt, throw it out! A lot of recycling companies are taking fewer materials because it's not economic to pick through the trash for the good stuff. You can also contact your local recycling company or Master Recycler program (if available, in the US, based by county) for advice. Different companies will have different business opportunities and be able to accept different things.
posted by momus_window at 4:29 PM on February 22, 2019 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Contact your town and ask them. Recyclers have gotten much pickier about contaminated plastics recently due to China's tightening its standards for what they will accept. Too many unacceptable items in the mix and the whole load becomes unacceptable. It's important that things that are to be recycled go into the system reasonably clean, or else it's actually worse than just throwing them out. But your town should know what they will accept.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:08 PM on February 22, 2019

If you tried to recycle plastic jugs that contained the fertilizer components would they be classified as hazardous waste? If so, I'd be concerned about introducing the containers into the recycling stream. It's possible that they shouldn't go into the regular trash, either, but ending up in a municipal, professionally monitored landfill would seem preferable to sending it to who-knows-which foreign developing country, where recycling materials may not be professionally handled.
posted by citygirl at 5:58 PM on February 22, 2019 [1 favorite]

Most towns have specific rules about what can be recycled. If not, look for a state website. My guess is that they will advise to throw it out, for exactly the reasons listed above (pickier recyclers and standards).
posted by clone boulevard at 6:15 PM on February 22, 2019

One more bit I thought of - you know that the residue on the jug is fertilizer, but the recycling folks don't. Even if it's something that would break down in the recycling process, they can't tell on sight and may bin it if they see it anyhow.
posted by momus_window at 6:53 PM on February 22, 2019

Does the supplier operate a take back scheme?
posted by unearthed at 9:14 PM on February 22, 2019

Stop using plastic jugs or keep using the same ones for years at a time and reduce the need for recycling instead?
posted by fshgrl at 12:06 AM on February 23, 2019

Response by poster: SaltySalticid: it's a 24-8-16 chemical fertilizer; the only source of carbon the packaging discloses is urea.

fshgrl: we're buying the jugs regardless, because we drink a lot of milk. I like to look at it as, I'm already recycling the jugs by using them a second time for fertilizer, I'm just not using any energy to melt them down and reshape them into official Fertilizer Jugs first.

Using the same ones for periods longer than ~6 months doesn't work well because the plastic will crack and leak eventually: milk containers aren't constructed for long-term use. Also by 6 months the brown encruddening gets pretty unsightly, and I don't have a way to clean the jugs without cutting them open, at which point I can't reuse them anyway.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 9:34 AM on February 23, 2019

I mix and store several gallons at a time, in plastic (high-density polyethylene) milk jugs. Storing something toxic in a food container has caused many poisonings. You can get stickers, which will help a little. I'm sure you're careful, but, yikes.
posted by theora55 at 5:38 PM on February 23, 2019

Response by poster: I could literally count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a child under the age of 13 has even set foot in the house in the last decade. Also the fertilizer is salty as hell, usually encruddened by gross-looking brown stuff, not in the refrigerator, and in a location that's awkward and often slightly painful for me to access.

I mean, you're not wrong in general, but the chances of an accidental fertilizer poisoning in this particular home are so nearly zero that I don't feel adding stickers would bring them any closer to zero.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 10:32 PM on February 23, 2019 [1 favorite]