PineOCleen cleaner spray bottles - new single use design

PineOCleen have a new design for their cleaner spray bottles which is so strictly one use that it’s ridiculous. The cap/spray mechanism is totally non-removable. This means that it is impossible to use all the contents and equally impossible to clean the bottle for recycling. When approached, PineOCleen’s only suggestion to me was to put the bottle in the landfill bin. Not good enough!

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Hi @paul_b.d, good to hear from you again.

Have you got a photo? Would he interested in seeing what it looks like.

Like you, we often use spray bottles in the garden or around the house to reuse…maximise its use and save money.

Bottles shouldn’t need cleaning before recycling if all contents have been used.

If the bottle is a different plastic to the spray trigger system, it can still be recycled but becomes a valueless co-mingled plastic. If it is the same plastic, the it is still recyclable and potentially more valuable for recycling.

Does the bottle have any indication of its post use treatment on its label (not on the extruded plastic under the base, but on the label proper)?

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Biocide. Toxic to you too. Breeds resistant bugs. Soapy water is just as good. Just making chemical companies rich.

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Make your own in the summer.

Mine is almost ready.

How do I attach photos? Anyway, just use google images, searching for “pineocleen multi purpose cleaner”.
The bottle and the trigger are different plastics.
I have never encountered a trigger bottle that completely empties itself.
In the short term I shall cut the trigger mechanism off and recycle separately. But I shouldn’t have to.

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@ annaa63 & ferij49. Try telling my wife that.

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There is a tutorial in the Welcome

The short answer is there is an upload button across the top of the editing window to upload a photo from your device. You can also cut / snip an image and paste it into the editing window, as I did with the upload button,
image

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Photos coming. No disposal comments on the bottle. As I said before, their phone advice was to put the bottle lock stock and barrel into the landfill bin.

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Thanks for the photos…they show exactly the new design.

It looks like it is a push on cap/spray fitting, rather than the traditional screw type cap/fitting

The residues lest in a bottle after its use will not impact on its recyclability.

One should be able to recycle the whole bottle, but if you plan to remove the spay mechanism, it will be best to place the bottle in the recycling bin and spray trigger into the general waste bin. The trigger could be recycled, but its shape will cause it to catch on things at a MURF causing blockages etc. Blockages or items getting caught are nightmare for MURF operators as they increase down time and increase maintenance requirements.

I disagree with this…it sounds like a ‘palm off’ or dismissive type response.

The bottle looks like it would be white PET (1) bottle which can be readily recycled and is one of the plastics which has good value and sort after for recycling. It should have a number within the recycling triangle at the base of the bottle (moulded into the plastic).

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Not sure but it looks like the green plastic over-fitting could be removed and then the trigger mechanism could be pulled off. The green cap possibly locks the whole fitting down. I’ll buy one and test it in the next week as my daughter likes the Pine O Cleen™ multipurpose spray, myself I prefer other products such as metho, bicarb, vinegar and salt & lemon juice and sugar soap.

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I have struggled with the last bottle we finished for some time. The cap/spray mechanism is NOT removable, and the person I spoke to on the phone at PineOCleen confirmed it is not meant to be.

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To add to waste concerns, it seems contrary to all 3 parts of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’

Notably reuse was my thought. Instead of reusing old bottles for things like vinegar or bulk cleaners, you have no choice but to throw it out and buy new. Probably why they did it, it will discourage people from using their own cleaning solutions shared above.

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Well the green plastic overcap comes off fairly easily, as the bottle is still quite full I am not attempting removing the rest of the spray attachment until it is nearly empty. To get the green plastic overcap off you push down on the clearish plastic fitting inside little triangle shaped cutaway on the top with say a screwdriver, bottom of a spoon handle that fits in that space or something similar… You then pull the overcap off towards the rear while tilting it slightly downwards. The fittings that are in the rear of the spray fitting just make it a little awkward but nothing stressful.

The plastic that makes up the bottle is 2 not 1 inside the recycle symbol, the bottle has a shrink wrap plastic sleeve with all the pictures, instructions and so forth.

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Thanks for confirning this. HDPE or High-Density Polyethylene…

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is very recyclable and is highly UV stable…which means like most plastics, recycling is needed to ensure it doesn’t stay in the environment for 1000s of years.

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At this point I am bound to say that my hope in starting this topic was that it might inspire people to protest the design with the company rather than indulging in esoteric discussions on how to dismember the components of the bottle to recycle it better, which is something I believe (perhaps somewhat naively) it should not be necessary to do.

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That’s not even close to fairly easy when you’re 70+ with some arthritis and a chronic shake. Silly me followed your instructions and with considerable difficulty got the green bit off our current bottle. Now I can’t get the bloody thing back on again.

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Thank you. Bought one last week and didn’t notice this. You are quite right. Naughty PineOClean. I have a multi cutter that will cut off the top swiftly but that should not be necessary and doesn’t facilitate filling and reuse.

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I agree that packaging into today’s day and age should be made so that it is easily recycled…and can be broken into various components to maximise the value of the recycled materials (namely to prevent contamination or generation of zero or negative value mixed plastics).

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Hmm I suffer from a few problems including loss of dexterity, lack of feeling/sensation, and a dose of arthritis. Getting it back on was easier than removal I thought. I would only be pulling them apart to get the last dregs out or to toss the bottle in the recycle. Once the bottle is empty I will be seeing how to get the spray attachment off the bottle as I noted above, as while experimenting with it I don’t want a liquid spill.

To get the green overcover on I found that putting the base part on first then wiggle the top of the green fitting until it passes the trigger mechanism. Final step was to push the little tab down with the back of a teaspoon handle until the triangle cutout went into place. While not screw on (which I think they should still be) hopefully I don’t need to be doing this frequently.

I did phone them on the toll free number to complain about the change and I’m currently trying to convince my daughter to use something else eg detergent.

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I find the (toilet-cleaner) squirt bottles much more useful than sprays and they have removable screw tops with additional push/pull closure heads. They work well with all sorts of liquids. Also, I can easily make the squirt-stream finer by inserting a narrower pipe, e.g. a section of quill from a bird feather.

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