Getting a takeaway pizza can be a nice treat for a weekend or a midweek evening, but some people might not be aware you may need to take a couple of steps to actually be able to recycle the box it came in.
Cardboard boxes can usually be recycled, but because of the grease that is left from these sorts of pizzas on the box it may result in your collection being rejected.
In these instances where the quality isn’t high enough to be reused, rather than being recycled, the cardboard will end up being incinerated or disposed of at the nearest landfill site.
To help solve this problem, Barratt Homes has put together a list of steps to take to ensure the box can be recycled properly.
5 tips to recycle takeaway pizza boxes
Remove all food from the box
Adding pizza boxes to your recycling with leftover food stuck to the box will make the cardboard unsuitable for reuse.
Make sure that all leftovers are removed before putting them out with the rest of your recycling, regardless of how small they may be.
Soak up excess grease from the cardboard
Excess grease on the pizza box will contaminate the rest of your recycling so use a napkin or paper towel to soak it up.
Tiny amounts of oil on the box won’t cause a problem but aim to be as thorough as possible with soaking up excess grease.
Use the cardboard insert to protect the box from your pizza
Many takeaway companies will include a cardboard insert in the box that your pizza sits on. This is to help protect the box from the greasy pizza bottom.
If you’re eating straight out of the box, aim to keep the pizza on this insert which can be used to capture the grease.
Just recycle the lid
Unfortunately, sometimes the box may just be too greasy to be suitable for recycling. Not all is lost in this situation though.
However, although the bottom of the box may recyclable, that doesn’t mean the top half isn’t!
Simply remove the lid that isn’t greased up and add this to your recycling.
It could still be used in a compost bin
If the pizza box isn’t suitable for recycling, cardboard is biodegradable which means it can still be decomposed in a compost bin.
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