What do I do with my used water filter cartridge?
Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at
8:57 am
Okay, so I bought a Pur water filter pitcher so that I would stop buying so much bottled water, with the intention to be more environmentally friendly.
The time just came to replace the cartridge for the first time. What do I with the old cartridge? Can it be recycled at all? I don’t like thorwing things in the trash if I don’t have to.
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Filed under: Water Filter System
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Cut it open and dump out the sand and charcoal in your flowerbed, if it is a sand/charcoal filter like most. Then you can recycle the plastic parts.
I looked up what they are made of:
The standard pitcher replacement filter is made of ion exchange resin and granular activated carbon. The PUR Plus Pitcher replacement filter contains ion exchange resin and granular activated carbon enclosed within a pleated microfilter. The microfilter allows for the removal of microbiological cysts such as Cryptosporidium and Giardi. The filter contains an antimicrobial agent to prolong the life of the filter. The contaminants or other substances removed or reduced by this unit are not necessarily in all users’ water.
In large scale systems, activated carbon can be rejuvenated by heating and ion exchange (the little plastic beads) can be rejuvenated by salt solutions. For example, my parents have an ion exchange unit that treats their well water and they have to add salt to a rejuvenating solution that backflushes (elutes) the column periodically. The microfilters are probably not easily cleaned and would have to be replaced, although pressurized back-flushing could extend the lifetime of these filters in a large system.
The economics of scale with pitcher-sized units makes it uneconomical to perform any recycling so disposal seems about the only option.
(I’ve worked on industrial and institutional sized water treatment systems over the past 15 years as part of my job).
This is one of those dilemmas that seems to happen a lot when you try to do the right thing. You’ve ended up trading one waste product for another.
The issue raised by the above web link that the filters are toxic time bombs is misleading. The level of contaminants captured from filtering a few hundred gallons of water is trivial. In fact, the presence of the adsorbing materials will fix contaminants present in the landfill leachate and help prevent their migrition into the natural environment.
The problem with disposing filters is simply that you are tossing away a solid waste that really doesn’t need to be disposed. I doubt that the filters placed in the recycling bins actually get recycled. I have been to several sorting facilities (I do a lot of environmental inspections) and non-recyclables are removed manually on a sorting line (It is really a terrible job I would think, picking through other people’s trash all day long, and it smells). Anything removed from the line is sent to landfill.
I use the Britta Maxtra cartridges and all the packaging carries the recycling logo and shows the cartridge as being recyclable so I put them in the recycle bin.
http://www.terraflo.com/recycle.htm
If the cartridge contains charcoal, that can be burned or used as a soil amendment. The plastic portion may be recyclable.
I have one of these also. And I have never contacted the company to see if they recycle them – which you could do. As far as I know they cannot be recycled. Most filters, air, water, etc… Remove contaminants and therefor are considered contaminated or saturated (they can’t absorb any more contaminants). That’s why most of these types of filters are not recyclable. I would go on line or call the company and see if they have some kind of return policy for used filters.
Hi,I can see no reason to save a used water filter.I, the pack rat, would put it in the aluminum wrapper it came in and toss it in the trash.You mean well, but those things are not reusable.I have a PUR water filter on my faucet,which I dispose of the way I explained earlier.So do not feel guilty about throwing it out and think of me as you do it. Good Luck.