Household PET/Alu waste in public PET/Alu bins

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1
Hi,

It is common knowledge that you should not dispose of your household waste in public bins. My question is, does this apply also to recyclable material (PET/Alu/Paper)?

Can I just take my empty PET bottles and drink cans with me when leaving home for work, and dispose of them in the dedicated bins in Zürich HB for example? I guess not, but where is the line then?

Thanks

Best

2
Plenty do it and I have never seen the accompanying Swiss stare

3
As long as you are not taking huge bags full of them and you are depositing them in the appropriate bins for recycling I don’t see a problem in doing that.

4
No it does not apply to public dedicated bins. You are doing the rioght thing. It is not so good to throw recyclables into general waste bins

5
Yes. When you buy PET bottles it includes a tax which pays for the PET recycling system. So you have paid upfront to be able to recycle it.

Obviously behave appropriately - just as you shouldn’t stack up the beer bottles around a bottle bank that is full, don’t do it with a shop or public PET recycling bin. In HB there are PET recycling facilities everywhere - big bins in all the supermarkets. The rules are if you sell PET you need to offer the ability to recycle PET and not just PET purchased at your outlet.

6
Thanks. PET is a bit different, as you can dispose of it in most (all?) grocery stores, gas station shops, etc...

Does the same thing apply to Alu (cans) and paper? They have dedicated bins in bigger train stations and shopping centres.

7
No my reply was for PET. The scheme I described is only for PET - alu recycling is funded by local authorities (mostly through sale of waste plus subsidy from Cantonal and local taxes) so operates quite differently. I would not rock up to SBB with my cardboard box of the last month’s alu can consumption. Use the local facilities for which you have paid through your local taxes for this.

8
At the supermarket you can, they usually place these as they are responsible for most household trash.

9

If it’s small amounts I guess it’s not a problem.

However, if you have a lot of PET you can dispose it in Coop or Migros. For alu, cans and glass there are dedicated disposal containers in your neighbourhood.

For paper and carton, every other week you can leave it on the street in front of your house and they will collect it (you find the calendar online https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/…skalender.html )

10
PET has a circuit with prepaid tax like electronics, so it's not relevant to this, but for the other trash SBB has to pay to process it if you throw it at the bahnhof (in addition to their own costs of emptying the not-so-big bins more frequently, because they are not meant for households to empty their month's worth recycling).

If it's just a tuna can and a newspaper a day, whatever.

But in theory they could do something about it.

You are paying taxes in your municipality for these materials so ideally you should throw it at your municipality's trash plaza.

In practice, I've heard of people always getting rid of their trash at SBB because they don't know anything else, and they were never prosecuted for that.

So if it's much more comfortable for you, whatever, but I would not abuse this with massive amounts of trash (especially paper and carton tends to be a a lot of material). If everyone did that, train tickets would end up being more expensive.

11

The pre-paid PET circuit is only for standard PET bottles for drinks. Because you pre-pay with your bottle, you can also get free bags (big ones with a blue stripe) from most stores to stash your bottles, crushed and with top on, and take the bag to your local store. E.g. from COOP: https://www.coop.ch/en/promotions/on…110l/p/6578519

For other PET and a variety of soft plastics (including tetrapak for example), there is a newish circuit “Bring Plastic Back” whereby you can buy bags from the store, and bring them filled to your local recycling place. This program is has expanded to over 500 municipalities, which is a quarter of the municipalities in CH, and generally any participating municipality will take the bags back from an inhabitant of a nearby municipality if you ask politely. See https://www.sammelsack.ch/ .

And if you want to know your nearest recycling places, for everything from alu to batteries to toner: https://recycling-map.ch/en/ . No, SBB is not one