My city says don’t recycle pizza boxes or cardboard with oil on it. I get it, but where do you draw the line? Surely one speck of oil won’t ruin a whole batch of pulp, otherwise they would have no hope for a pure batch of paper. One out of 1 million people could ruin it each week. I saw a previous that discusses “why no pizza boxes” but it doesn’t explain how much grease is too much.
In: Chemistry
There really isn’t a precise cut-off. Neither in law nor in common sense.
If it feels greasy overall or even drips, then clearly no. If it looks clean and feels like cardboard, then there should be no reasons not to treat it like any other cardboard that contained food (e.g. frozen pizza packaging).
Anything else… as said there is no fixed rule. I usually treat it as okay if it’s just a few individual drops of fat in the paper, but if it already soaked or flowed to form larger stains than single drops, that’s usually where I cut the line.
Just try to make a best effort and don’t feel bad with whatever choice you took!
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