100 Ways to Reduce Your Impact

Step 17: Throw away bottle caps

Why can't I recycle bottle caps?

From Harvard Law's Facilities Management Website:
Removal of the cap allows for evaporation and prevents retention of residual liquid. Extra liquid causes a number of problems: it adds weight, which adds to the energy (and fossil fuel emissions) necessary to transport the recyclables; it creates a mess and causes injuries in the recycling plant.

Comments

[superMacaroni]

Bottle caps are made from #5 plastic. You can recycle them at a gimme 5 location. http://www.preserveproducts.com/recycling/gimme5.html

[jamesmcip]

How about you just use a reusable water bottle instead of using bottled water? It is much, much better for the environment. And if you think tap water is gross, get a Pur or Brita filter. I haven't touched bottled water in a half a year.

[BtheBike]

Buy Bottled water ???

Get a tap filter . Get a Jug Filter. (brita, pur,wutever)
Slow drip the tap filter water into the filtered jug.
Slow drip releases the chlorine as gas .
Slow drip gives water longer contact with the dual filters.
Put it in your Reusable bottle.

Best Water Ever

[lained20]

If you save up your bottle caps, take them to your local AVEDA retail store (hair and beauty products). They will recycle your bottle caps to create new bottle caps for their products!

[lynnaluna]

Several months ago I contacted AVEDA to find out if I could send the caps to them, since I don't live near a store. You can actually mail caps to AVEDA at:

ACA Waste Services
40 Eads Street
West Babylon, NY 11704

Of course, the environmental impact of mailing is a problem... Save up a large amount of caps to send together and try to use environmentally friendly shipping materials etc. I try to reuse shipping materials if possible.

They also gave me this info:

"Caps included in this collection are any plastic "twist on" caps. Some examples are; water bottles, soda bottles, laundry detergent bottles, ketchup bottles, and shampoo/conditioner bottles. Caps that are NOT included are any metal caps and any "snap fit" plastic caps. Some examples of snap fit caps are; margarine and cottage cheese caps."

You can also check it out on their website: http://aveda.aveda.com/aboutaveda/caps.asp

[ronmaggi]

Thank you for the Aveda tip, I happen to live across the street form one!

[Errezeta]

In my country there're several campaigns for collecting the bottle caps. Hospitals collect them, sell them and with the money they buy wheelchairs. Poor people in the streets do recycle the whole bottle and live with the money they earn from recycling. But I don't think throwing away the cup is an intelligent move. What I do (and propose) is: 1. Take the empty bottle, put some water in it, shake it in order that the water 'cleans' waht was lefto of the content. 2. Empty the little water you've put. Then take the bottle and press it extracting as much air as you can from it. 3. Once this is done pute the cup on again and close it tightly so that no more air can get in or out the bottle. 4. And that's pretty much it, now the bottle occupies almost no space. Now you can collect all your empty bottles in a box or a bag and once you've collected enough you can take them out (and what I mean is, make sure they get recycled).

[greenbeanmusicmachine]

Seems like you're expected to buy water these days. I like to go on long distance bike rides and if I forgot my bottle or drink all the water, I can't get more water anywhere, because restaurants and gas stations are all want you to buy their drinks so they wont give up water. Luckily I have a Camel Bak, but it still irks me.

[belcat]

This tip should really be: Quit buying water. Your tap contains the most monitored, most healthy water. If you don't like the taste, get water filter, and save thousands on water bottles.

[Feltmacer]

Or you could just not buy water bottles. Those things take a lot of plastic!
I doubt it's much better because of cooling costs, but if you are comfortable with bottled water you could get a water cooler.

[A good name]

I've found that they make good ammo for small rocket launching things (I use mine for a handheld catapult)

[shinyhappycarrie]

actually, you can't recycle them because the seals are "too hard" to remove, so it's a combination of plastic types...there are LOTS of ways to reuse them though. And separating them is key, because otherwise the tops of the bottles are just cut off during recycling, and even more plastic is discarded (e.g., the threads and part of the neck of the bottle).

[KingArthurLOL]

Doesn't sound like a good tip. Throw away plastic caps? Good tip for making the jobs of the handicapped easier, but this article should contain information on how to recycle these caps. Throwing them away will not reduce your impact. Great point [martian742] :)

[martian742]

I wouldn't say throw caps away. Better just separate them. In Czech Republic it is very popular to collect bottle caps and give them to workshops where disabled people can process them for further recycling.