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What to do with glassware that is impossible to clean

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.

BassTurd ,

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.

scsi , (edited )

There are ways to clean glass passively, it sounds like your residue is organic.

  • acetone, the pure kind you buy in a tin can at the hardware store. it will require some form of sealed container to put the glass in (acetone evaporates quickly and eats almost all organic matter) - finding a container big enough for your glass might be the hard part of this but it works (soak for days, and do not touch acetone with hands or use organic gloves - internet search for proper gloves)
  • ZAP heavy duty citrus cleaner, comes in a gallon jug. soak the glass in it for days or longer, doesn’t need a sealed container. This is the same stuff you can use to clean your sink drain and is pretty safe to handle but still, wear basic gloves just in case.
  • high-purity (like say 70%) iso alcohol with table salt as an abrasive (standard grocery store things). This is more of for the inside, where you can put in alcohol + salt and seal with your hand and vigorously shake to let the salt scrub the residue and the alcohol to eat it. Uses a lot of alcohol due to it’s evaporation, so buy a bigger jug.
  • specialty products found on 420-friendly websites or your local 420-friendly store; weed residue is a thing for bongs, bubblers, pipes and any other sort of smoking apparatus and they need cleaned and are hard to get inside; products are made to soak the glassware in to try and get the junk out. generally expensive and hit or miss on quality but they exist

Hope this helps. (edit: acetate -> acetone, oops) (edit2: 90% -> 70% alcohol per comment)

Bassman1805 , (edited )

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 ,

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.

Bassman1805 , (edited )

Hmm, I think you’re right about sterilization vs gunk removal. Got those mixed up.

scsi ,

At the quantity the OP might use, buying by the gallon might make more sense - having a look to Amazon, the popular concentrations in gallon+ sizes are 70% and 99.9% (about the same price, $25 USD/gal) - it probably makes more logistical sense to go with 70% here to reduce evaporation and increase usable liquid on these tall, thin objects (so let’s say “sloppy use” of oddly shaped hard to handle glass).

I’ll leave my update at 70% concentration as the more economical choice - I’d presume based on their comment a soak in ZAP ($18 USD/gal) first is needed, then followed by the iso method… so it’s a little expensive no matter what for something they might not care about that much.

akwd169 ,

Furthermore, for sterilization 70% is more effective because the other 30% is water, which helps ensure everything is exposed to isoprop for long enough and bacterial cells take in the isoprop and die (because water passes through the cell membrane, taking isoprop into the cell with it), rather than ‘hunkering down’ and surviving until the solvent is gone

However for cleaning electronics, the water content is bad because it does not dry quickly and can cause corrosion, so 99% is needed

So the percentages have varying uses and should be chosen based on the task at hand

Case ,

This does not apply to electronics. You want that 99% to leave as little moisture as possible.

jpreston2005 ,

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.

norimee ,

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.

bob_omb_battlefield ,

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…

thawed_caveman ,

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.

t_378 ,

If you don’t want to attempt cleaning it, you could just bury them outside?

Fermion ,

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.

norimee ,

What kind of advice even is that?

dysprosium OP ,

From a scale of 0 to 10 that advice is -3.14.

Carrolade ,

Glassware is frequently not recyclable, due to additives during the manufacturing process.

Ninpuukamui ,

What about the glass jars that are sold with food inside?

Carrolade ,

Container glass is usually fine. Sometimes dyed glass won’t be accepted or will need to be sorted though.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

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.

thisbenzingring ,

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.)

Diddlydee ,

A jet wash will undoubtedly remove whatever gunk is there.

SeanBrently ,

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.

skillissuer ,
@skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

have you tried using bleach or drain cleaner (prills; sodium hydroxide) to clean it

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