Hi! I need your help on a very important debate involving peanut butter and arguing with my mom – two of my favorite things. (Kidding.)
I went over my parents’ house this weekend. They are the best because they managed to raise me to be about 2% normal and because they had ceviche.
At some point in my little visit I saw this (huge) Peanut Butter jar on the counter – filled with soapy water. What?
After some intense questioning (mostly fueled by the fact that I knew I could have scraped a lot of that PB out with a spoon and had a nice lil snack) I found out that my mom was washing the PB jar. Um, okay… why?
She washes the peanut butter jars before putting them in the recycle bin. She gets her skip bin from a skip bin hire in Melbourne. She insists that this is pretty common and necessary.
I disagree.
She thinks most people wash out things like PB jars before recycling them.
I get 98% of the PB out of the jar with a spoon so this is really unnecessary for me. But even if you don’t spend extensive amounts of time with getting every last drop of PB out of the jar – I think it’s unnecessary.
My theory is that the recycle place has to clean everything anyway so double washing actually wastes water.
I Googled it for more information…
and it turns out a lot of people ask about how to clean out PB jars or if they have to. We’re in this together! Don’t you feel like this is a bonding moment? We all need to recycle and eat PB. But do we also need to wash the PB jars??
‘’
How do you get peanut butter out of the jar for recycling?
Monican’s answer: Eat it. Scrape it out with a long iced tea spoon.
But there are specific rules for different areas. So ask your local recycle-ologist or mayor or priest or whoever is in charge of the recycling program in your area.
Speaking of random food stuff from my parents’ – they had ceviche and added avocado to it. Do that.
And I think I found the most amazing 99 cent store deal of my entire life… a whole case of coffee pods!!! This is crazy. I bonded with a fellow 99 cent store shopper over this. We both went to grab a cart and I got one for my parents and one for my brother
Before I hit up my parents’ this weekend I ran 16 miles. It was my first run longer than 13.1 miles in a long time.
It’s been hard for me to run long outside of a race situation. I like running races as long runs or training runs but I don’t feel ready for 26.2 miles. I wish there was more 20 mile races.
Anyway. I’m building my mileage back up because there are a lot of Fall marathons in southern California (um, and a lot of other places actually). So I’m grabbing my lil Today’s Planner and sticking to it.
During the week I was thinking about donuts a lot. Sometimes this happens more often or intense than other times.
I couldn’t get it out of my mind so I decided to go big and get 6 donuts. All for me.
Okay, the Boston Crème pie one wasn’t for me – I took that one to my dad. And I shared the rest of them with my fam. Boom.
My #1 pick is the fluffy glazed. My local donut place makes a really good blueberry donut too. And that orange one is really good too… do all donut places have these options?
My best life advice part 1:
1. Put your donut in the microwave for a few seconds (not too long).
2. Have gift cards on hand from a local grocery store or fast good place to hand out if you see someone asking for food or money.
3. to be continued…
I have never been known to wash a peanut butter (or almond butter, since that’s what I eat!) jar before recycling it. Then again, like you, there isn’t much left in the jar! I guess giving them to the dog to “clean” counts?
Also, those donuts look fantastic. I’m a donut lover (who isn’t) but much prefer a simple glazed donut over anything overly fancy.
Best donut shop in Southern CA? In New Orleans where I’m from, it’s Blue Dot! Hands down.
My mom washes them out so she can reuse them for something else.
I saw a video of how they dump all the recycling in this huge trash pile and how it gets sorted. Why bother cleaning it when it’s going in a huge heap.
hahaha, this is hilarious!! And now that I think about it, my Mom washes hers out too!!! My husband and I don’t… but now I’m wondering if we should! PS. I’m super jealous of your dollar store find, you’re definitely right about it being the most amazing deal ever!
I cannot believe how much peanut butter was left in that jar!!! I use a rubber spatula to get what my finger(s) can’t reach! There is none left when I’m finished.
Your $.99 store is awesome. I have a local $1 store where I get routine stuff, but they never find awesome deals like yours.
If I had an avocado tree in my backyard I would put them in everything. Secret: I’m going to make a guacamole dip today, but instead of using avocados (because they’re like $1.30 here), I’m going to use peas!!! I can’t wait to see if anyone notices…..
I cut the jars in half and let my dog lick them clean… yup she’s pretty much spoiled, and no waste!
My pups get to lick the remaining PB. Which is very, very little when I’m done
I think you have to get rid of all food traces, or they will just throw it away; recycling is hand-sorted and anything with food in it will gum up the works and they need to toss it.
Butter jar to my dog and he cleans it out before I put it in the recycling
I always clean my jars – or anything for that matter – before recycling!
Charmaine Ng | Architecture & Lifestyle Blog
http://charmainenyw.com
My mom does the same thing! And honestly, I looked it up and all you really need to do is give stuff a quick rinse 🙂 They are more worried about the gunk from the containers ruining the paper in the bins.
Hey Marissa, Just a head’s up that your blog’s link is blogpsot and not blogspot so it’s not coming up when people click on it.
I’ve always wondered about the cleaning/recycling thing. I generally do it for gross stuff (i.e. tuna) but not peanut butter.
My preferred method of cleaning PB jars is to give them to my dog. It’s a treat for her and DAMNNNN does she get them clean!
Holy crap that coffee deal!! I would have bought them all and asked my husband to move out so I have more room to store more coffee.
A lot of recycling centers will not accept recyclable items that have food residue on them, so I do clean everything. I have heard that if they receive items with food residue, they have to put them in the landfill (which makes me sad) so scrape those jars clean! Or make overnight oats, the forgotten darling of the recipe blogging world.
There is so much peanut butter in that jar still!
Seriously!
You scrape out what you can and then give the jar to the dog to lick clean!
I think your mom is right. I don’t scrape out the last of the PB, but I feel guilty about it.
I scrape out every last drop of PB that I can…then I wash it out before I throw it in the recycle bin.
Same here. Our recycling is supposed to be clean.