What is recycled in the gray container

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One of the doubts that may arise when recycling is due to the variety of containers that exist. Currently, the best known of all are green (for glass), yellow (plastic and metal containers) and blue (paper and cardboard). However, along with these, the traditional gray container still survives, which is usually the mixed bag in which all the garbage that you don't know exactly where to throw ends up. If you want to go a little deeper into the function it has and know what is recycled in the gray bin, keep reading Green Ecology and we will tell you about it.

What garbage should be thrown in the gray container?

The gray container it is the oldest of all garbage containers that exist and, in fact, it is the garbage container that existed before recycling programs were implemented that cataloged garbage by colors to facilitate its subsequent recycling. In fact, even today, many people consider that in the gray container you should put everything that simply does not go in the other containers.

This is an error, since there are certain types of garbage that are not thrown into any of the containers (including the gray one), but must be taken to a specific container or directly to a clean point. Two good examples of this type of garbage could be batteries or used cooking oil, two highly polluting garbage that are not thrown into any of the garbage cans at home, since they do not have color-cataloged containers located on the road. public, but they are specific containers and less numerous.

Thus, when it comes to the garbage to be thrown in the gray container, roughly it can be said that it is mainly about biodegradable or non-recyclable material (It should be taken to an incinerator to manage it as efficiently as possible). In this sense, we can talk about food or plant remains, but also other products such as dust and hair collected by the vacuum cleaner, waste from domestic animals, cigarette butts, corks, or Disposable hygiene-related products, such as diapers or pads.

Is the garbage in the gray container recycled?

Any garbage that is thrown into a container must be managed correctly, which means that you should try to recycle as much of the material as possible. In this they also include the protocols of each municipality, since there are some that have more resources to carry out a higher quality recycling than others.

However, despite this, there are some types of garbage that cannot be recycled nowadays. These wastes are the ones that will finally be taken to landfills or incinerators, where they will be burned to reduce their volume as much as possible and be used as fuel to produce energy, with its consequent impact on the environment both in one case and the other. . Thus, it is true that the garbage in the gray container is recycled as far as possible. However, it is a recycling that is not as efficient as it is in the cases of the blue, green and yellow containers.

What about the brown or orange container?

Although it is not yet a container that is very popularized, more and more municipalities are implementing the creation of a new container for organic waste. The color of this container varies according to the localities, but the most common are brown and orange. These containers are called to separate one of the garbage that, until now, was destined to be thrown into the gray container: organic matter.

The great advantage of separating the organic matter from the rest of the garbage of the gray container is that it can be better used, mainly as fertilizer or in the production of biomass. In both cases, this implies a lower impact on the environment than when it is abandoned in landfills or taken to incinerators, since its transformation and subsequent use is more efficient, since it does not suffer any type of chemical contamination when in contact with the other types of trash that end up in the gray bin. This makes it a proposal that, little by little, will become more common in the majority of the town halls of many municipalities until, finally, it becomes a new container as common as the others to which we are already accustomed.

If you want to read more articles similar to What is recycled in the gray container, we recommend that you enter our Recycling and waste management category.

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