Here’s a debate that will tear your dinner table apart. Keep the cap on or take it off? The new rule is: keep it on. Most recycling plants now love the attached cap.
Why? Because caps are made of different plastic (Polypropylene, or #5). If the cap is loose, it falls through the sorting screens and gets lost. Attached to the bottle, it gets recycled too. It’s the buddy system for plastics.
Plus, a cap keeps any nasty critters out of the bottle at the facility. Nobody wants a bottle with a family of spiders living inside. You’re doing humanity a solid.
The Label Lie
Don’t bother peeling off the label. That’s a waste of your precious time. The recycling facility has hot water baths that dissolve the glue and float the label away. They have science for that.
Labels are usually made of a different material (polypropylene or paper). They get turned into a sticky sludge called “pulp” or filter fluff. That fluff gets burned for energy or turned into floor mats. So your label becomes a doormat. Poetic, right?
How To Recycle Water Bottles? A Comprehensive Guide
