How to crush 1 litre water bottles?

[Sophelia]

OK, so I have a load of 1 litre plastic water bottles that I want to recycle, and I need to crush them to fit them in the recycle bin.  The problem is:

• I don't have a technique - I've never done this myself and I'm a bit of a wimp (my hand/arm strength is poor)
• When I am with my dear beloved and he does it, it makes an excruciatingly horrible loud squealing noise and I have to go out of the room

I have tried google without success - couldn't find a YouTube video on how to do it, except for this one using the mouth - which I will not try!!!!  I have searched for bottle-crushers but not getting an impression they will do 1 litre water bottles - most are wall-mounted tin crushers.  The two things I can think of to try are:

• Stamp on them
• Put it in a vice (vise) and squish it slowly (if the grip holds it)

Any other suggestions?  What do you do?

Thank you for any ideas (even frivolous ones!).

[Luzifer's right hand]

Stamping on them and closing them afterwards to prevent reexpansion works best in my experience if you want reduce size as much as possible.

[Tywin et al.]

I'm so sorry, but I can't resist:

 

[Spockydog]

Take the lid off. Fold bottle in half. Squeeze it tight. Hold in place. Replace lid. Screw tight. Release pressure. Pepare to be amazed at how many bottles you can now fit in the recycler. 

Edited November 5, 2022 by Spockydog

[Gorn]

You don't have to crush them flat, folding them is usually good enough. Take the bottom, fold it so the bottom is in the side, then fold again. Finish by putting the lid back on to prevent reinflation.

[Spockydog]

Gorn knows. 

[TheLastWolf]

Boomer advice from a millennial 

Avoid buying plastic shit, carry your own bottle wherever you go

[maarsen]

8 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

Boomer advice from a millennial 

Avoid buying plastic shit, carry your own bottle wherever you go

To make life simpler, carry a 20 liter jug so one always has water for those unexpected trips to the Gobi desert.

[Sophelia]

29 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

Boomer advice from a millennial 

Avoid buying plastic shit, carry your own bottle wherever you go

 

20 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Yeah, because everybody's tap water is completely safe and pleasant to drink.

Avoid being patronized by jellyheads who have yet to realise that we don't yet live in a unicorn-filled utopia where you can simply opt out of everything that is harmful and/or morally objectionable. 

Both are fair points 

I usually drink tap water (hence my inexperience in crushing bottles), but I'm having sink issues due to being away so much, the hard water deposit has gunked up my cold tap so only a dribble comes out and I don't feel safe drinking water that has been sitting in the pipes for a long time as I have some lead piping (the hot tap works better).  I'm working on getting the taps replaced as they are from the 1970s, then I'll go back to drinking tap water again.

(But the other place I live has foul-tasting tap-water and we don't have space in the fridge for a water filter...but that may change too...)

[Sophelia]

59 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Take the lid off. Fold bottle in half. Squeeze it tight. Hold in place. Replace lid. Screw tight. Release pressure. Pepare to be amazed at how many bottles you can now fit in the recycler. 

 

56 minutes ago, Gorn said:

You don't have to crush them flat, folding them is usually good enough. Take the bottom, fold it so the bottom is in the side, then fold again. Finish by putting the lid back on to prevent reinflation.

Thank you. I will see if I can make folding work (quietly), will add to list.

[Lord of Oop North]

The key is to remove the lid before you crush that bottle like Conan.

[Ran]

Folks, stay polite. 

[TheLastWolf]

30 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Yeah, because everybody's tap water is completely safe and pleasant to drink.

What can I say, I have the second tastiest water in the world to bathe and wash my dirty innerwear and arse 

31 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Avoid being patronized by jellyheads who have yet to realise that we don't yet live in a unicorn-filled utopia where you can simply opt out of everything that is harmful and/or morally objectionable 

Convenient

 

32 minutes ago, maarsen said:

To make life simpler, carry a 20 liter jug so one always has water for those unexpected trips to the Gobi desert.

Believe it or not, I got a 5 litre can sitting a few feet away for an early morning 6 member 6 hr trip. Plus bottles. I walk the talk. But yeah, the last time I was in a desert, 20 litres wasnt enough. Thar, not Gobi. I'll check out Sahara and get back to ya'll

9 minutes ago, Sophelia said:

Both are fair points 

Nice try

I ain't gonna bitch about how kids in Somalia drink their own piss or how a few tonnes of plastic matter of factly ended up in whale bellies or shit but then I didnt expect the typical western cling on to their luxuries whine. Hell, I can count the number of times I bought plastic water bottles in my 2 decades of existence, thats including my providers regency. All under extenuating circumstances. Not that I don't have access, thank you globalization. The sheer population here translates to amounts of plastic waste that you can't imagine. The marshland I used to enjoy as a kid is one big landfill now. 

Sigh

Never mind, when is Oppenheimer releasing again? homo sapiens are doomed anyway, apologies and pardons in order for forgetting to not give a fuck

[Larry of the Lake]

I've never tried to crush them, they burn really well so are easy to 'recycle' at home.  

 

[Luzifer's right hand]

40 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

What can I say, I have the second tastiest water in the world to bathe and wash my dirty innerwear and arse 

Convenient

 

Believe it or not, I got a 5 litre can sitting a few feet away for an early morning 6 member 6 hr trip. Plus bottles. I walk the talk. But yeah, the last time I was in a desert, 20 litres wasnt enough. Thar, not Gobi. I'll check out Sahara and get back to ya'll

Nice try

I ain't gonna bitch about how kids in Somalia drink their own piss or how a few tonnes of plastic matter of factly ended up in whale bellies or shit but then I didnt expect the typical western cling on to their luxuries whine. Hell, I can count the number of times I bought plastic water bottles in my 2 decades of existence, thats including my providers regency. All under extenuating circumstances. Not that I don't have access, thank you globalization. The sheer population here translates to amounts of plastic waste that you can't imagine. The marshland I used to enjoy as a kid is one big landfill now. 

Sigh

Never mind, when is Oppenheimer releasing again? homo sapiens are doomed anyway, apologies and pardons in order for forgetting to not give a fuck

India actually banned plastic waste imports a few years ago I believe. The fake recycling bubble has already collapsed partially and I doubt it will survive the decade as the key step is exporting the waste to an Asian or African country and pretending it has been recycled.

Edited November 5, 2022 by Luzifer's right hand

[TheLastWolf]

14 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

India actually banned plastic waste imports a few years ago I believe.

One of the handful of good things the sanghis did

[Sophelia]

3 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

I've never tried to crush them, they burn really well so are easy to 'recycle' at home.  

 

I hope you're trolling here - otherwise not only is this awful for the environment but you could be giving yourself cancer too.

3 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

India actually banned plastic waste imports a few years ago I believe. The fake recycling bubble has already collapsed partially and I doubt it will survive the decade as the key step is exporting the waste to an Asian or African country and pretending it has been recycled.

The plastics in water bottles are easy to recycle (compared with other plastics) and the water bottles in Spain are themselves made of 100% recycled plastic (not that I am condoning or excusing the use of plastic and recognise this process has limits).  In the UK (my other country), according to Which? consumer magazine "HDPE bottles and PET bottles have a really high recycling rate: over three quarters of what's put on the market is collected and recycled." 

While reducing use of plastics is the top aim, and there are serious problems with dumping, trying to recycle is better than just making people think that nothing gets recycled so they may as well put everything in the landfill bin.  As this article in the Guardian put it, "It is tempting to see plastic piled up in Malaysian landfills and assume recycling is a waste of time, but that isn’t true. In the UK, recycling is largely a success story, and the alternatives – burning our waste or burying it – are worse."

So yes, there are huge problems and we all need to reduce waste most urgently, but being fatalistic about recycling makes the problem worse because people will give up trying.

[BigFatCoward]

I recycle about 100 beer cans a week. I might be doing more for the environment than everyone other than Greta. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

52 minutes ago, Sophelia said:

I hope you're trolling here - otherwise not only is this awful for the environment but you could be giving yourself cancer too.

The plastics in water bottles are easy to recycle (compared with other plastics) and the water bottles in Spain are themselves made of 100% recycled plastic (not that I am condoning or excusing the use of plastic and recognise this process has limits).  In the UK (my other country), according to Which? consumer magazine "HDPE bottles and PET bottles have a really high recycling rate: over three quarters of what's put on the market is collected and recycled." 

While reducing use of plastics is the top aim, and there are serious problems with dumping, trying to recycle is better than just making people think that nothing gets recycled so they may as well put everything in the landfill bin.  As this article in the Guardian put it, "It is tempting to see plastic piled up in Malaysian landfills and assume recycling is a waste of time, but that isn’t true. In the UK, recycling is largely a success story, and the alternatives – burning our waste or burying it – are worse."

So yes, there are huge problems and we all need to reduce waste most urgently, but being fatalistic about recycling makes the problem worse because people will give up trying.

PET and some types of PE are the only type of plastics that can be recycled somewhat cost effective. PET is by far the easiest and even there caps and labels are not recycled. I actually read up on rPET recently and companies in EU actually import rPET to hit their goals instead of actually recycling enough.

Any "recycling" that is based on exporting and importing plastics from outside the EU involves exploitation of the workers doing the sorting process, damage to the environment during the recycling process and disposal of unsuitable material(burning in the open usually) and unnecessary transportation. There is a reason why China and India stopped that and I hope the trade with "recyclable" material outside of the EU will be outlawed soon. The statistics will look less good afterwards though.

The UK exports mainly to Turkey nowadays and you can google some documentaries I suspect to see what those recycling numbers mean in reality. Recycling is one of the most exploitative industries on the planet. 

Burning plastics in powerplants with good exhaust purification is actually better in most cases.

The only recycling that actually makes sense in a large scale for most types of  plastic waste is to turn the material into base hydrocarbons again because that does not require much sorting and can handle the thousands of additives used in many types of plastics. The big plastic producers are actually starting to move in that direction and there is a reason why they are doing that because other kinds of recycling are actually not really working on a large scale for plastics.

Edited November 5, 2022 by Luzifer's right hand

[Sophelia]

Thanks for that @Luzifer's right hand - I have seen the stuff about Turkey.  That would be a huge positive step if the exports cease - I didn't know that importing was happening too.

The water bottles that I have been buying had their caps changed this year to make them more recyclable (used to be coloured, now transparent), something that has been happening across the UK, so there are small signs of progress.