We all have huge amounts of belongings in our homes, and the kitchen is probably the destination for most things we buy. Putting aside the thousands on food each year, there’s also all the appliances, crockery and so on. When the time comes to replenish consumables and replace worn items that have seen better days, throwing away certain items like knives brings questions about safety and responsible recycling.
Disposing of kitchen knives is possible for most people in general waste bins, however it must be done safely and responsibly. Learn how to correctly package your old knife sets for disposal to prevent injury or accidents as they’re processed at kerbside and at the waste processing plants.
Can I Throw Knives In The Bin?
In the majority of council areas, you can put knives in the bin with the rest of your non recyclable waste. You should do so carefully though, which means wrapping them securely in something like cardboard or material.
Securely wrapped means in a manner that the knife will not be dislodge in transit from its wrapping, and also will not cut through the wrapping.
The easiest way to achieve a secure wrapping is to tightly encase the knife (in particular, the blade) within whatever you are using to wrap it. If that’s material, make sure you go around the blade (and ideally the handle too) as many times as possible.
Similarly with cardboard, fold the card over and over around as much of the knife as possible, especially the blade end.
Finally, you can use tape to prevent the wrapping from unwinding in the bin or in transport to the waste processing plant.
Do Blades Pose A Risk To Bin Men?
It’s reasonable to worry about the health and safety of bin collection workers if there are knives hidden in your waste, but it is much less of a worry than in days gone by.
A couple of decades ago, households didn’t use wheelie bins like we do today, instead having the old style circular metal bins. It was a much more dangerous job to be a refuse collector back then, having to lift the weight of bins to manually tip them into the back of the lorries.
Now though, while bin men still need to be physically fit to walk around all day and drag large and heavy wheelie bins to the lorries, the mechanism to lift and empty the bins are largely automatically completed away from humans.
For that reason, as long as you are careful about wrapping them before they go into your wheelie bin, knives pose minimal risk to bin men.
Legally Disposing Of Knives
In case you’re worried, even the police confirm that it’s fine to place knives in wheelie bins. Their website covers it here.
The law doesn’t say much about the disposal of knives specifically, which often comes as a surprise to people, as they’ve heard about the police running schemes to get weapons off the street in the past, so assume they have to be handed in.
The difference between knives and other items covered by these schemes is that it’s perfectly reasonable, and in fact expected, that most homes will have numerous types of knife in the kitchen.
Are Kitchen Knives Recyclable?
While it is perfectly legal to throw your old knives in the bin, there may be better ways available in your area. In addition to a lot of the contents of general waste bins, most knives can be recycled.
If you take old knife sets to the tip, you will be able to have them recycled, usually by placing them into the metals skips. Recycling anything is usually better than it going into landfill, and knives are no exception. Metals can usually be repeatedly recycled unlike some other materials, so are a sustainable option.
Can I Sharpen Kitchen Knives?
While recycling knives is preferable to sending them to landfill, their re-use is better still. The reason that you’re throwing them away could be that they’re not as sharp as they used to be.
Did you know that you can sharpen old knives using a simple device? They’re easy to get hold of too, for example cheap and with fast delivery on Amazon.
By sharpening instead of replacing old knives, there is no waste. You also save money as you don’t need to buy a new set, and the sharpening process can make them last several times longer. Typically a high quality knife sharpener is much cheaper than a high qualify set of knives, so the savings are there to be had.
Will Charity Shops Accept Kitchen Knives?
If you do still want to change your kitchen knives, why not give your old ones to the local charity shop, or another good cause that’s close to your heart?
As knives can be a significant investment, there’s often a good demand for them, even second hand. For charity shops, it is a choice for them whether to accept them. The law prevents knives from being sold to under 18s, so some choose not to accept donations to prevent their sales staff from finding themselves in a difficult position.
Many charity shops do accept them though, but I’d recommend phoning ahead as I found I got a quick and definitive answer with a simple phone call.
Can I Donate Kitchen Knife Sets To 2nd Hand Shops?
Second hand shops are in a similar position to charity shops with reselling knives from a legal standpoint. Conversely though, almost all shops selling used items do accept knife sets and individual kitchen knives.
This difference is down to the fact than most second hand retailers are one stop companies, whereas charities often have a network of shops. If you own your own shop, you’re selling the items yourself, so can be confident that you can check the age of individuals that may appear to be under age.
What Is A Knife Amnesty Bin?
Knife amnesties are something we touched on earlier on this page, and are schemes offered by the police in order to make it as easy as possible for people to hand in dangerous items.
They’re offered on the basis of anonymity (sometimes with exceptions), but the idea is that people can walk into a secure location like a police station and place the item into a knife amnesty bin without needing to identify themselves. They’re often not limited to knives, but other subjects are outside the scope of this page so we won’t go into those!
What About Other Types Of Bladed Items Like Scissors?
The rules on disposing of scissors in the UK is broadly the same as with knives so worth mentioning. The key part is making them safe, so you can also wrap them to prevent injury and put them into the bin, dispose of them for recycling as metal at the tip, or donate them for resale.
It’s worth pointing out that the same goes for tableware like knife and fork sets, and we’ve got more information on that on our page about recycling cutlery.
Finding Knife Disposal Near Me
In order to find out where you can dispose of knives in your area, a good place to start is your council’s website. Local authorities aren’t always the best websites from the point of view of quickly finding information, so we’re building up a collection of information, area by area. To see if we’ve got you covered yet, see the ‘Counties’ second of the menu at the top of the page.
