Submitted 2 months ago by dysprosium@lemmy.dbzer0.com to [deleted]
General waste bin or glass recycle bin or neither?
I have some decade old, gruesome tall thin glasses infested with mold and food residue, cloaked in a grotesque and sticky film of decaying death that… are in no easy way to clean. What to do with them?
I think it might be dangerous to workers when put in the general waste.
As a lazy fuck who has let his dishes get gross and moldy more than once, i doubt these glasses are too gross to clean.
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Hot water + degreaser. Soak overnight. Rinse.
my bong has a bunch of crevices/nooks that get gunked up with resin n’ such. Put in some salt, a healthy splash of alcohol, and shake it up! you’ll be surprised how much that gets.
Size depending, an ultrasonic cleaner and alcohol will do the trick. That’s how I clean my glass pipes from resin and debris, and it always comes out spotless with no manual cleaning effort.
I have this little glass condenser tube that is a pain in the ass to clean. I have not thought about getting an ultrasonic cleaner. Do your pipes lay horizontally in your ultrasonic cleaner or stand vertically?
I put the pipe into a baggie and cover in iso alcohol. I put water in my ultrasonic cleaner and then put the baggie in the water. My cleaner has an option to heat the water, and I do that because I think it helps, but not necessary. Then a 6 minute cycle, I’ll dump the alcohol, fill with water and run a short cycle to rinse everything well. Then just manually rinse everything off until I’m good. Sometimes after the first cycle, I’ll take the baggie out and give it a good aggressive shake, and run a second round just to make sure.
I use a mighty vaporizer most of the time, so I’m usually cleaning the capsules and mouthpiece, but I do my pipe at the same time, so it usually doesn’t get a big tar ball between cleanings. The first time I used it, I had a peanut M&M sized ball that didn’t desolve, but everything else washed free, so it was loose inside. I put my air hose nozzle on the mouth, a quick blast in the trash, and it was done.
A lot of people recommend little jewelry cleaners which I think are under $50, but I grabbed a larger one from harbor freight for a little over $80 and I think it was the right choice. I have a glass bubbler attachment for my vape that gets gnarly on the inside, and it’s kind of long and wouldn’t fit in a smaller cleaner.
Glassware is frequently not recyclable, due to additives during the manufacturing process.
What about the glass jars that are sold with food inside?
Container glass is usually fine. Sometimes dyed glass won’t be accepted or will need to be sorted though.
Strong acid, strong base. Bake at 500C if it’s borosilicate to bake off all organics. It won’t get much cleaner than that.
Probably depends on where you live but if its gross just put it in the garbage. If you are concerned about the workers safety, put it in a box and fill the box with other trash so it doesn’t present a danger. Not all glass can be recycled even if its put into the recycling bin. But even glass that is not recyclable can be used for lots of other things. One of the cool things I discovered a bunch of years ago is that junk glass that isn’t recyclable can be used to capturing methane from old landfill (they create a thick layer of crushed glass on the top of the old landfill and then cover that with a membrane and then they can suck the gas that is stuck between the glass layer and the membrane.)
Me, I’d put them in general waste. I might wrap them or put them in a sturdy paper bag if I had any, and put that in a plastic bag to contain the evil.
have you tried using bleach or drain cleaner (prills; sodium hydroxide) to clean it
Just lob it in the bin.
bottle brush
A jet wash will undoubtedly remove whatever gunk is there.
As the current owner of a 1930’s era property with tons of glass and rubble in the ground, please don’t. We have landfills so that individual properties don’t get filled with trash.
What kind of advice even is that?
From a scale of 0 to 10 that advice is -3.14.
Coarse Salt. Add just enough water to move it around + a little dish soap and shake. Works like a charm.
Put them in the glass recycling. This might be different from your general recycling bin.
To recycle glass they break it down into tiny shards, it gets industrially cleaned and then melted and formed into new glassware.
Glass doesn’t has to be clean to be able to be recycled, just mostly separated into colours.
I’m not sure this is the correct thing to do. Around here they say that only container glass can go into the glass recycling because the composition of other glass can be different…
call your local recycling center and ask. Seriously, they’ll usually be very happy to help you, especially if you’re asking something like this. Most people never bother to check what is and isn’t supposed to be sent to them.
Here’s the thing. Glass is damn near infinitely recyclable in theory. It, however, isn’t usually economically realistic, so it varies a lot from location to location whether or not it actually gets recycled. A lot of it ends up in local landfills.
But, bleach will kill off anything that would be a problem. Mix up a 1:10 solution, soak that shit, then let it air dry thoroughly. Won’t be anything left on it that’s dangerous.
scsi@lemm.ee 2 months ago
There are ways to clean glass passively, it sounds like your residue is organic.
Hope this helps.
Bassman1805@lemmy.world 2 months ago
A note on alcohol as a cleaner:
Alcohol is actually a more potent solvent when in solution with water. 70% isopropyl alcohol is so prevalent because it’s actually more effective than higher concentrations.
Uranium_Green@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Idk how true that is, it’ll be highly dependent on what you’re trying to dissolve.
This sounds to me more like the advice I’ve heard for using isopropyl for sterilizing equipment and surfaces, its more to do with how quickly the pure stuff evaporates. Evaporate too quickly and it doesn’t sterilize, whereas 70% is best of both worlds.
Case@lemmynsfw.com 2 months ago
This does not apply to electronics. You want that 99% to leave as little moisture as possible.