No matter how great a knife is, there comes a time when you will need to replace it with a new, sharper knife. A new knife makes everything easier to cut through any ingredient in your kitchen.
However, safely disposing of your knife should be your main priority. Knives are dangerous items that may result in injury if not disposed of properly. If you follow these simple tips on how to dispose household knife properly, you just might be saving yourself or anyone from potential danger.
3 Ways on How to Dispose Household Knife Properly
1. Wrap It Up
Of course, you cannot just throw your unwanted knife into the regular bin bag just like that. You want to wrap it up with something to ensure the blade is entirely covered. A knife can hardly be called a knife if it has no active blade. Thus, one of the best ways of disposing household knives is by wrapping them to conceal their sharp edges.
There are many items to consider for this task, but the most common of these items are paper, cardboard, cloth, plastic bag, or tape.
You can wrap the blade of your knife up with as many papers as necessary to make the blade safe. You can tear off old notebooks, magazines, or newspapers. You can also wrap the knife with cardboard or the regular plastic bags you get from shopping for groceries. The most important thing is to ensure that the knife is entirely covered to the extent that it is incapable of causing injury.
After wrapping the blade up, you must secure whichever material you have used in wrapping with heavy-duty tape. Alternatively, you may wrap the knife into a bundle directly with heavy-duty tape. If you have kids around you, this style of wrapping might not entirely be safe. Thus, you may further seal the wrapped bundle in a box that is additionally secured with tapes.
2. Conceal in a Plastic Bottle
This is an excellent method for small-sized knives. Instead of wrapping your kitchen knives with paper or tapes, you can cut open a used plastic bottle that is about the same size as the knives you want to dispose of. You can then conceal these knives in the bottle and wrap the bottle with heavy-duty tape before disposing of it.
To ensure all manners of precautions are well-explored, you can further label the plastic container with “Caution: Sharp”. This gives a clue to anyone handling your trash to handle that particular wrapped bottle with care. The best plastic bottles to use are your regular pet drinks bottles, water bottles, bleach bottles, coffee cans, and any other kind of bottles that is large enough to conceal your unwanted knife.
3. Consider Recycling or Handing Over
Many recycling centers around you are happy to receive your knives. If your knife is made with solid steel or aluminum, try depositing it at any recycling center around you. However, do well to explore the concealing options above. i.e., wrapping your knife before depositing it with any recycling center.
Recycling is more environmental-friendly than just discarding or burying your unwanted blades. The knives are probably going to be melted to produce better knives or other useful items.
If you have quite many unwanted knives, you want to dispose of them. You can make some cash when you trade them off at a scrap metal yard. This way, you may even end up with enough money to buy a new one. Also, you can take your unwanted knives to the police station, where you get to hand them over. Your local police station knows what to do with them.
Conclusion
Watching out for others as much as you do for yourself is important, especially when an injury is possible. It’s important to know how to dispose of a household knife without resulting in injury. Wrapping and concealing these knives are the most common disposal method. However, other greener methods such as recycling and donating these household knives to people who value them are becoming more important.
If your unwanted knives are still pretty much in good condition, donating them to shelters and secondhand stores is another great disposal option. When donating, you wouldn’t need to wrap the knife with tapes as this might be difficult to remove and may result in injury while trying to take the tapes off. Your regular cardboard box will do for the donation.
