Should you crush your plastic bottle before throwing it in the trash? Some households make a habit of doing this in order to save space in the blue garbage bag. But is this the right way to do it? Well, the answer depends on the sorting center that takes care of your waste!
Indeed, some machines used in sorting centers do not recognize plastic bottles if they are crushed. They are confused with flat papers or cardboards and are therefore sent with them. “After passing through the pre-sorting cabin, the waste passes through a disc screen. They are then directed into the cabin of flat bodies or into those of hollow bodies. A bottle that is crushed is then analyzed as a flat body and put with paper and cardboard, ”explained Pascal Loiselle, former director of Récup’Aire, to Voix du Nord.
In Belgium, Fost Plus coordinates recycling operations. And his advice is clear: it is better to flatten your bottles lengthwise before throwing them in the trash. This saves space in the blue bags. But don’t compact them from top to bottom! Flattening it lengthwise prevents the bottle from rolling on the belt at the sorting center and being more easily detected by the machine’s optical scanner.
