Should you recycle envelopes with those plastic windows in the normal paper recycling?

33 comments
  1. Pergamin. Transluzentes Papier.
    Ja ins Papierrecycling.

    https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamin

    Edit: Anscheinend wird auch Kunststoff verwendet. Trotzdem ins Papierrecycling.

    It seems like some Manufacturers use plastic. It is still recyclable with paper. The impurities are very small and will be destroyed by the recycling process.

  2. We also always separate this little plastic window from the paper. Than paper to paper and plastic to where all the other trash goes

  3. According to this site: [https://www.swissrecycling.ch/fr/substances-valorisables-savoir/substances-valorisables/papier-et-carton](https://www.swissrecycling.ch/fr/substances-valorisables-savoir/substances-valorisables/papier-et-carton)

    You can recycle them with paper as long as they are in small quantity, which I guess corresponds to the average taxpayer in Switzerland. Another site states that it’s OK given how thin the plastic window is.

    EDIT: Found this in French: [https://www.rts.ch/audio-podcast/2016/audio/la-question-minute-recyclage-des-enveloppes-a-fenetre-25736108.html?id=25736105](https://www.rts.ch/audio-podcast/2016/audio/la-question-minute-recyclage-des-enveloppes-a-fenetre-25736108.html?id=25736105)From a recycling center’s director. Removing them is great but nowadays’ sorting technology deals with impurities such as these and even staples.

    EDIT2: Thanks for the upvotes and award!

  4. Im traumatized by that thing and that question.
    As a teenager a threw one if those in the paperbin without cutting that little thing out, when my dad saw it he forced me to eat the plastic window

  5. TIL that you can apparently put these with the plastic into the paper recycling. I have always and probably will just continue to tear out the window and recycle the rest.

  6. It’s pretty easy actually:

    The white flat paper goes into the grade A paper pile.

    The crumbled parts of the white paper goes into the grade B paper pile.

    The plastic window goes into the plastic collection.

    The glue that holds the plastic window in place needs to be dropped of at the dangerous goods collection.

    The Black ink goes into the black ink bin.

  7. How swiss of you… Swiss italians would add some more plastic just to make sure they’re making things worse for recycling facilities

  8. The world is literally breaking apart, crisis, recessions, revolutions, wars – and then I came here to see the Swiss problems 😀

  9. There is some kind of test you can do – hold a lighter or a match close to the see-through window, if it lights like paper it’s ok, if it starts to smolder like plastic not. Last I heard is that almost all of them nowadays are based on some cellulose, but if you really want to know that is how to find out.

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