Bottle Top Recycling – A Guide

When throwing away any type of bottle at home or work you might wonder what to do with the cap. It could be from a plastic bottle of water, a glass beer bottle, an empty milk bottle from the office kitchen, or even a bottle of detergent or another cleaning product. Recycling bottle tops is the answer.

The myths and old messaging around what to do with bottle lids was to remove them – but that’s not the case now. Most bottle lids can be left on when they’re recycled as they’re easily separated at recycling facilities. Removing them could mean the caps end up in landfills or littering the environment.

They might be small but with 1.3 billion bottles used worldwide every day and each one having a lid, it soon adds up to a lot of waste. Discover what to do with bottle caps of any type and everything you need to know about bottle top recycling with this guide.

Bottle caps are recyclable. You can recycle bottle tops made from plastic or metal of any colour. Leave plastic bottle caps on when you dispose of them in a plastic recycling bin, dry mixed recycling bin, or household recycling bin. Metal bottle caps can be recycled with glass bottles too.

All bottles and their caps must be clean and dry before they’re thrown away to remove any contaminants. They’ll be taken to a recycling centre where the bottles and lids are checked and separated. Magnets remove metal bottle caps while plastic bottle caps are separated due to their different densities and weights.

After they’re separated the caps are recycled in their individual material streams. For example, HDPE plastic lids are recycled with other HDPE waste. This is often cleaned, shredded, melted, and formed into pellets to create new HDPE plastic products. Metal lids are segregated and recycled to form fresh steel or aluminium materials.

In the summer of 2024, a new EU policy came into force that means plastic bottles now have tethered caps. Rather than a lid that screws off completely, there are small extra strips of plastic that attach the cap to the bottle. The mandatory design across EU states aims to reduce single-use plastic waste.

It’s hoped that by having the plastic bottle cap attached people will recycle both bottle and lid together. This should reduce the risk of people separating them and littering the top or throwing both away with general waste. Plastic bottle tops are one of the most littered items in Europe, which the measure aims to reduce.

Recycling bottle tops is essential to protect the environment. Many are made from types of plastic and metal that take hundreds of thousands of years to degrade and release various chemicals as they do so. Bottle lids are also small and often mistaken for food by birds, fish, and other animals – which can cause choking and death.

More than 20 million bottle caps have been removed during beach clearances across the world in the past 30 years. Research from the Dutch North Shore coastline found 80% of bottle caps littering beaches were from consumer drinks and food packaging and 70% were damaged. This suggests they’d been in the environment for a long time.

Every bottle has some kind of lid made from a material that’s often recyclable. This includes empty milk, wine, and drinks bottles, as well as bottles and caps for cosmetic and cleaning products. Recycling them helps extract value from the material, contribute to a circular economy, and avoid adding to landfill levels.

Many businesses dispose of all sorts of bottles and their lids. This includes office workers throwing away drinks bottles, restaurants getting rid of empty beer and wine bottles, and cleaning companies disposing of detergent bottles. Recycling empty bottles and their caps is important for businesses to help the environment and save money.

Recycling such bottles and their tops rather than disposing of them with general waste prevents them from going to landfill sites. This has a positive environmental impact and reduces how much landfill tax your company pays. It helps extract value from the materials too.