Recycle Your Empty Cartons with Novak’s Residential Recycling Service
The two most common types of cartons are refrigerated cartons and shelf-stable cartons.
Refrigerated cartons contain things like:
- Milk
- Juice
- Cream
- Egg substitutes
- Soy and grain milk
Shelf-stable cartons contain things like:
- Juice
- Milk
- Soy and grain milk
- Soup and broth
- Wine
What Makes a Carton?
Cartons are made of paper materials in the form of paperboard. The paper board is covered by thin layers of polyethylene, which is commonly known as a type plastic. Shelf-stable cartons also have a thin layer of aluminum at the bottom of the carton. Here’s the average breakdown:
Refrigerated Cartons:
- 80% Paper
- 20% Polyethylene
Shelf-stable Cartons:
- 74% Paper
- 22% Polyethylene
- 4% Aluminum
Recycling your cartons is as easy as recycling the rest of your household material; simply place the carton in your residential recycling bin from Novak. Even though cartons are primarily made out of paper, they still contain plastic and occasional aluminum products, which is why they don’t need to be separated with your paper recyclables.
What Does a Carton Become?
When Novak Sanitary Services picks up your residential recycling bin, the materials are sent taken to our facility where they are sorted and baled. The bales of recycled cartons get shipped to paper mills and are mixed with water. Once in the water, they material is put into a big blender called a hydra-pulper that extracts all the paper fiber from the plastic and aluminum. The paper fiber then goes on to make new products like recycled paper products and even building materials.
The leftover aluminum and plastic from the shelf-stable cartons and the plastic left over from refrigerated cartons is used in a few different ways:
- Generating energy
- Shipping crates
- Manufacturing
- Board-like lumber materials
Recycling Facts about Cartons [Source: Recyclecartons]:
- Since 2009, carton recycling access has grown from 18 percent to more than 40 percent.
- Depending on which type of carton you’re recycling, a carton can take between 3 months to 5 years before it starts to decompose. [Source: About]
- The carton can now be recycled in over 40 percent of U.S. households.
- 62 of the 100 largest U.S. cities offer carton recycling.
- The carton is a highly efficient package. In fact, it’s nearly twice as effective as an egg! While the carton has a package to product ratio of 7-93, an egg’s ratio is 13-87. This means there is more product and less packaging when using cartons.
Next time you finish a carton or milk, juice, or whatever you have stored in your cartons, rinse it out and throw it in the recycling bin instead of the trash. Novak Sanitation Services offers residential recycling and are the leading local experts on everything recyclable. Remember, with our Recyclebank program, earning rewards and free gifts is as easy as throwing a carton in the recycling bin. Visit our website to view a complete list of our services, or give us a call at 605-338-7126 and contact Novak today to get your household involved with curbside recycling and start earning rewards today!
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