Peeling the labels off beer cans

Oh yeah...not a fan of those! Peel and stick with full adhesive.

 

Water use is an important issue for those of us with septic systems. Less water disposed usually improves performance and extends the lifetime of the system. We have municipal water but try to minimize the volume that goes down the drain (mostly with efficient fixtures). We used to have private well water, and the electricity costs to pump the water up was not trivial. So conservation there was helpful too. There is no free lunch/flush.

 

I'm skeptical of the "recycling" info on unverified sites in case they're industry sites pushing wishcycling, but I think this California State site should be reliable:

https://calrecycle.ca.gov/BevContainer/Consumers/FAQ/

It doesn't mention the need to remove labels, which might mean it truly isn't necessary OR that it's such a small percentage of recyclables to not matter. BUT interesting that the rule of thumb is if the label is where the CRV info is printed then the label needs to stay on! I notice most cans have the CRV info etched on the top, not on the label.

I always cut the plastic wrap labels off cans, and I peel most sticker labels off unless they've got the really goopy glue. I leave them on bottles. I think rinsing them out first may be more important TBH.

 

Oh man, this is dope! I think I’m gonna start doing this too. I hadn’t even considered peeling the labels off for recycling, but this is a cook use of the peeled labels

 

I’ve lost the labels to more than a few German beers keeping them in the cooler for too long. I guess it makes for a fun mystery beer when that happens lol

 

A reminder that Reduce > Reuse > Recycle. Here’s my super official power ranking for environmental beer consumption…

(1) Drink more water
(2) Drink beer on tap or sold in reusable growlers
(3) Buy beer in glass bottles and reuse them for homebrewing or other purposes
(4) Buy beer in glass bottles and recycle the bottles
(5) Buy beer in metal cans, remove any plastic or vinyl-coated labels, and recycle the metal
(6) Buy beer in metal cans and recycle the cans without removing any labels

There’s no question that burning plastic releases dioxins and other harmful pollutants, but my guess is that the emissions associated with burning off a beer label as part of can recycling are less severe than those associated with creating a new metal can from scratch.

FWIW, when I toured a paper recycling plant a few years back, the folks there hated the switch over to single stream / mixed recycling systems. Since the switch over, the bundled paper they receive — after it’s been sorted — is still riddled with plastic and other trash. (I saw yogurt containers, diapers and all sorts of shit in the mountains of paper waiting to be recycled.). The plant’s own internal re-sorting systems produce dump trucks worth of waste before the paper is recycled, but a lot of contaminants still make it through.

For aluminum recycling, you could probably compare the EIS emissions data of from a plant from year to year and see if there’s been any noticeable jumps in dioxin emissions, and then compare that data to estimates of when (a) their metal recyclable streams went mixed and (b) craft beer cans became trendy.

 

I've read that in some/many places recycled glass just ends up in the landfill due to few glass recycling plants still in operation, and the cost to ship the heavy glass there.

 

I don't know how widespread the practice is but, around here, glass is crushed and used as underlayment for sidewalk and road construction.

 

I think his does happen, but I would hope that most places do what I was told by someone who worked for Republic Services:
Glass is broken as part of the recycling process and then the fragments are collected. They then pulverize the fragments for use either in glass manufacturing (rare--you need to have a glass manufacturing facility nearby to make the trucking costs worthwhile), landfill cover (common), clean fill for things like road bed preparation (common).

So one of those options is sending it to landfill, but as a clean cover, not as trash. This advice was specifically for the Northeast, so I'm not sure whether it applies across the country.

EDIT: You beat me to it @papposilenus

 

I started peeling the sticker labels off of cans a few years back. I’m an inveterate collector of all sorts of silly things, and with the almost complete abandonment of branded bottle crowns, I needed to scratch my itch. I peel them off and stick them on baking parchment paper, and stack them up. I must have 500-600 now. Like my other collections of nonsense, they will likely just sit in a pile until I die.

Id love to say I do it for environmental reasons, but I’d be lying. I suppose it’s a happy consequence of my collecting, that I may be helping out a bit. Of course, as my wife often reminds me, the amount of baking parchment I use up is not insignificant…

 

Nice. Are you watching them from time to time?

 

My 6-year old daughter likes to grab them from time to time to organize them. She’s trying to think of a craft she can do with them. I peruse them when she does this sometimes. It does remind me of some beers I’ve tried that I’ve forgotten about.

 

No cookies for you!?!

 

Nice. Get your children involved in your hobbies from an early age. And remember! Don't tell Mommy what we do all day while she's at work...

 

in some parts that might be considered child endangerment......but someplace there is a picture of me drinking from a bottle when I was 2......my brother and sister also have similar portraits

 

It appears more like a situation of a child tease since that bottle seems to be empty.

Cheers!

 

I just had a Surly BA Darkness, and the label was shrink-wrapped on the can. I had to cut away at it, then tear it off. No adhesive, and too rekt to bother keeping (the label and me). Guess I haven't paid enough attention to can labeling before to know if shrink-wrap is very common. It was a clear plastic with the label printed on it.

 

I hate those recycle machines at food markets. When I vacation these seem to be all over and 90% of the cans get rejected, even the ones I buy at said market. Now we just bag them up and the folks that clean the houses for the owners take them and cash them in. When I’m on vacation I dont have the want to do all this to get back a few $. If all cans just worked then I would have no issues. The last time I did this and got a good amount of cans to work I forgot to cash in my ticket when I bought groceries. I want to say it was in NH that we had to take everything to a center and they sorted and gave us cash. The walls there were filled with old bottles/cans and uncommon/rare bottles. I have photos on an old hard drive someplace.

Enjoy

 

Isn't New Hampshire one of the two (RI the other) New England states that doesn't charge a mandatory bottle/can deposit?

The thing I find amusing (in a bad way) about the complaints about these automated return machines that reject many pieces is that in the early days -1970/1980s - of these laws one of the arguments the pro-deposit people made was that it would create jobs.

 

Can't speak for RI, but correct, NH has never had any form of can/bottle deposit.

Scrap yards will give you cash at some percentage of market value for bulk aluminum.