It’s Kuhl To Recycle: Bottoms Up

Drink Craft Beer And Love The Planet

By Mark Kuhl

For the GPHN

Small breweries can’t afford the minimum 150,000 can order for pre-printed aluminum cans so they often resort to full wrap shrink sleeves to label their product.

Shrink sleeves are printed with high-impact graphics and are applied to filled beer cans with heat so they shrink tightly around the can. This allows brewers to label small batches in an attractive way but these plastic labels provide new challenges for recyclers.

Some optical sorters mistake these cans as bottles so they are placed in the wrong material stream. The labels also create challenges for the aluminum processors and can reduce the quality of their end product.

So, if your favorite craft beer is labeled with a shrink sleeve, you can easily remove it before dropping the can in the recycle bin. Lightly dent the can to create a space between the can wall and the label, then puncture the label with a kitchen fork or knife. Simply rip the label off the can and throw it in the trash.

Mark Kuhl is an environmental advocate who lives in Park Hill with his family. His handy tips and news about recycling household items appear every month in these pages. A directory of his past columns for recycling everything from paint to Styrofoam to shoes is at greaterparkhill.org/sustainability/recycling-directory/.