u/thevoidchild

▲ 12 r/askTO

How clean does recycling need to be?

Hello everyone!

I am relatively new to Canada, and the country I lived in before did not have recycling, so I apologize if this is common knowledge.

How clean does your recycling need to be? I was under the impression that you had to wash it thoroughly, so that it would be like new/you could even eat and drink from it again. But I think I may have been mistaken, and it doesn’t need to be that clean, and it’s okay as long as no actual chunks of food remain?

This would be a game changer for me, as I am disabled and scrubbing recycling totally clean consumes a lot of my energy and often leaves me exhausted and in pain.

As an example, I have plastic containers from ready-to-eat salads I get. The bits of food are easy to get out, but the plastic stays slightly coated from the dressing, and it is very annoying and time-consuming to scrub completely and totally clean. Am I understanding correctly that I could recycle it after just giving it a rinse, and not have to scrub away the residue entirely?

Thank you so much for your time and help! :)

reddit.com
u/thevoidchild — 3 hours ago