While the base of pizza boxes can often be too greasy, the lids are usually recyclable.

Waste360 Staff, Staff

February 9, 2018

1 Min Read
Fresh Start Waste Services Encourages Pizza Lid Recycling for National Pizza Day

Fresh Start Waste Services, a Manchester, UK-based waste management company, is celebrating National Pizza Day by encouraging households to recycle the lids of takeaway pizza containers.

“While we'd love to be able to recommend that you recycle your entire takeaway pizza box, it's just not feasible in most cases thanks to the food oils which tend to coat their bases,” said Colin Harvey, director of Fresh Start, in a statement. “However, most pizza box lids will be absolutely fine, and being able to recycle 50 percent of a product is infinitely better than recycling none of it at all.”

Whole pizza containers are often unable to be recycled due to grease that contaminates the pulp of the cardboard. This is mostly a problem with the base of the box, however, while the lid is usually perfectly recyclable.

Fresh Start is encouraging households to separate lids from their contaminated bases, since recycled cardboard is much more energy efficient than new cardboard.

Fresh Start Waste Services has more:

Pizza boxes. They’re made of cardboard, so they can be recycled, right?

Unfortunately, that’s only partially correct.

While it’s true that takeaway pizza boxes are indeed made from cardboard, an almost universally recycled material, the problem with putting used boxes in the recycling bin is that the corrugated card packaging is usually spoiled with a greasy residue left in the food’s wake.

Read the full story here.

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