Do NOT recycle boxes used for refrigerated and frozen foods such as; frozen pizza, beer and soda, TV dinners, and buttah. (Still, that Land O’ Lakes box can be “reused” — everybody knows this trick right? My mom showed me.)
The Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation wants you to know why this thin cardboard is different; then it should be easier to remember.
Regular cardboard breaks down when wet, and that’s how recyclers at paper mills mush your cardboard back into pulp – they use water. To prevent this from happening to all your boxed frozen and refrigerated cardboard packaging, it is either coated or treated with a chemical that prevents it from breaking down when wet – precisely what recyclers need it to do! For this reason, refrigerated and frozen food boxes are contaminants to to our paper buyers, and are not accepted for recycling.
Strangely, beer and soda cartons DO get soggy when wet. What’s up with this prohibition? If you try to carry a wet case it will totally disintegrate. Try it! I don’t just mean corrugated, either.