How to Dispose of Gift Set Packaging
Separate Boxes for Recycling... Put Cooling Materials in Pay-As-You-Go Bags
During holidays, people usually express their gratitude by giving gifts to those they appreciate. However, while gift wrapping feels pleasant when receiving, it often becomes a hassle once the holiday is over. Since more waste is generated in households during holidays than usual, it is helpful to know the proper way to separate and dispose of waste.
Recently, the distribution industry has released gift sets that reduce unnecessary packaging or use eco-friendly packaging materials. Gift sets made entirely of paper or those that reduce plastic usage have become a trend, but there are still many cases where unnecessary packaging creates waste.
Nowadays, with contactless gifting becoming common, many gifts are received via delivery. Delivery boxes should be disposed of after removing the shipping label and tape. Flatten the boxes and sort them together for recycling, and plastic trays or cushioning caps used to secure products should be classified as plastics and disposed of separately. If there are contaminants, they must be washed clean before recycling, and coated paper boxes should be classified as general waste.
Twine used to tie products should be thrown into the designated volume-based waste bag. Air caps can be recycled if they do not have tape attached or contaminants. They should be placed in transparent or translucent plastic bags and disposed of as plastic waste; there is no need to remove the air.
For cooling materials like ice packs, if the packaging is made of paper and the contents are eco-friendly materials such as water, salt, or starch, it is acceptable to pour the contents down the drain. However, if they contain "superabsorbent polymers," the situation is different. Superabsorbent polymers are classified as a type of microplastic, do not biodegrade, and are difficult to recycle. In such cases, the cooling material should be disposed of as a whole without opening the packaging. Although it might seem correct to separate the plastic packaging for recycling, the proper method is to place it in the volume-based waste bag as general waste.
Net-shaped packaging that wraps fruit can be recycled as Styrofoam (expanded polystyrene). Styrofoam used for packaging agricultural, fishery, and livestock products, as well as cushioning materials for electronic products, can also be separated and recycled. On the other hand, products coated or glued with other materials, construction-grade interior and exterior Styrofoam, and colored Styrofoam plates should be disposed of in volume-based waste bags as general waste.
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