Sorting

How about packaging for St. Nicholas chocolates ?

 

St. Nicholas may travel round with a sack, but we know that secretly he prefers the blue bag. If we sort packaging properly, we can recycle more valuable material and less of it will end up in the incinerator. Find out how to dispose of the various types of plastic and aluminium packaging used for chocolate.

Plastic packaging

Many chocolate St. Nicholas and Pete figures are sold in plastic bags. Once you have enjoyed the chocolate, the empty plastic bag goes in the blue bag. After all, plastic bags are plastic packaging. That is what the P in PMD stands for: plastic packaging. Is the marzipan in plastic packaging? Yes, it's also PMD packaging, so it goes in the blue bag. Empty sweet bags? PMD. By the way, did you know that plastic packaging used for non-edible St. Nicholas gifts also goes in the PMD bag? The plastic box for a toy car, or the plastic blister around a doll? You guessed it: that’s plastic packaging, so it’s PMD.

plastic verpakkingen van Sinterklaas

Plastic packaging is further separated at the sorting centre, depending on the type of plastic. This is called 'secondary sorting'. No fewer than eleven different types of plastic materials are separated, including both rigid plastics (boxes, bottles, jars etc.) and soft plastics (bags, films etc.).

It’s also good to know that the nets used for gold chocolate coins also count as plastic packaging. You read it here first: they can go in the blue bag!
 

Aluminium packaging around chocolate figures

The aluminium foil around a chocolate St. Nicholas or the gold aluminium packaging around gold coins are packaging too. Not plastic, but metal packaging. That's the M in PMD. As well as typical metal packaging types such as drinks cans or food tins, it also includes aluminium wrappers around chocolate coins. These may be a lot smaller than cans or aluminium trays, but they can still be sorted at the sorting centre, thanks to the use of trommels and eddy current separators.

zilverpapieren verpakking van chocolade Sint

Trommels, or drum sieves, are like large, spinning tumble dryers with holes in them. They separate out small materials from the remainder of the PMD. These then go into an eddy current separator that can separate out the small aluminium items. If you roll the aluminium wrapper from a chocolate product into a ball, it will fall through the holes of a trommel more easily than a piece of aluminium foil that is not rolled up. So before sorting the aluminium foil packaging into the blue bag, roll it into a ball. That increases the likelihood that it will be sorted correctly and consequently recycled. By the way, did you know that crown caps and coffee capsules are small aluminium packaging products? They go down the same track as the wrapper for a chocolate St. Nicholas.

The magic of recycling

Sorting metal packaging allows us to save a lot of primary raw materials. Aluminium and steel can be infinitely recycled with no loss of quality. What is more, recycling steel requires up to 85% less energy than producing new steel. For aluminium, recycling uses up to 95% less energy. If you sort your metal packaging, including the aluminium foil wrappers from St. Nicholas figures, you can help reduce your carbon footprint and protect natural resources.

Once the metals have been recycled, they are converted into bars, blocks or cylinders, ready for use in numerous applications. These are everywhere these days, used for new packaging for cosmetics or food products – including chocolate. Manufacturers don't only use new metal packaging for products, but there are recycled metal packaging materials too. Electrical appliances are a good example. The construction and car industries also use huge amounts of recycled metals.

So give your St. Nicholas packaging and all other packaging types a new lease of life by putting it in the right bin. If you sort your waste properly you will get treats, but if not you’ll get the switch!
 

Before putting aluminium foil packaging in the blue bag, roll it into a ball.

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