‘Ruined’: Aussie recycling hack slammed by Veolia

Everyone is looking for ways to find shortcuts for the dreaded Christmas clean-up, but companies are warning against this recycling hack.

Aussies across the country woke up this morning fuzzy-headed and a touch nauseous, faced with the daunting task of the Christmas clean-up they’d procrastinated the day before.

Fitting the cardboard remnants of boxes from kids toys, and a mountain of wrapping paper in those red, yellow and blue bins seems like a hurdle that may be too high. So where else to look to but the platform of wisdom that is Tiktok.

A Tiktok user has shared her recycling hack for the Christmas clean-up, but was met with criticism. Picture: Tiktok / Emma Ann Becker

Social media platforms are full of life hacks, shortcuts to boost your productivity carrying out menial or difficult tasks. But one such recycling hack has sparked a stern warning from waste management company, Veolia.

The hack itself involves watering down cardboard boxes with a hose to make them more malleable and thus fit more into those overflowing recycling bins. One Aussie Tiktoker shared the hack, which has been floating around the social mediasphere for years, to her 1000 followers earlier this month.

“I can’t remember where I saw this hack, but it’s too good to not share – especially at Christmas time!,” the caption read. “Water large boxes down (on the lawn so it’s getting watered at the same time). The boxes shrink and fit into recycling so much better!”

The post drew constructive criticism from punters with one commenter responding with “I’m pretty sure this makes them non-recyclable once they’ve been wet?”

Another Tiktoker with the handle “West Australian Garbo” commented, “let them dry out please!!! Makes our trucks heavier.”

In fact, the hack got so much traction that waste management company Veolia, weighed in on the issue. “We love to see recycling hacks, so it pains us to say that this one only achieves recycling harm,” Veolia’s Craig Barker told Yahoo News Australia.

Waste management company Veolia stressed the importance of keeping recycling material dry. Picture: Supplied

“So much so that it could even result in an entire bin’s worth of recycling being ruined.”

While Mr Barker was fairly understanding of the plight of Aussies struggling to stamp down the contents of their recycling bin, he maintained that anything going in the yellow bin should “always be dry”.

This is due to the difficulty of sorting wet materials that are stuck in “one big sloppy wet pile”.

However, Mr Baker kindly gave Aussies alternative methods to beat bin Tetris. “A good way to vent this exasperation is to tear apart a cardboard box,” he said. “Or stomp on it, or cut it up, but just don’t wet it.”