I became familiar with the term nesting when training to become an Early Childhood Educator. Learning how to nest items is one of the basic skills young children learn.
An example of children’s nesting toys are boxes or barrels that come in graduated sizes so the small ones fit inside the bigger ones. The challenge is to get them in the right order so they all fit inside the biggest one.
Another good example is the Russian doll that opens to reveal several more dolls inside.
A grown-up example would be measuring cups or serving bowls that nest inside each other. They all stay together and take up less space in the cupboard. I am sure there are many more examples.
What does nesting have to do with recycling?
It actually causes problems.
We bale recyclables and ship them to Winnipeg where they are separated from a moving conveyor belt. The process of baling often forces one kind of material to nest inside another making it very difficult to separate them for recycling.
It is hard to avoid but we do what we can to help out by making sure Items aren’t nested before we bale them.
Often things arrive at the Centre nested. Some of the nested items we frequently see are cans inside tissue boxes, aluminum cans inside tin cans, plastics and jars inside cereal boxes.
Another problem we see is garbage nested inside of boxes.
Nesting the same materials is fine. An example is flattened boxboard boxes like cereal boxes, inside one boxboard box or smaller tin cans inside of larger one.
Flattening boxes, large pop bottles and milk containers will save space in the recycling bag.