Can recycling: what to do with used pouches
The can is recyclable and the pouch is not. What is actually left in a spent pouch, what the makers say, and the one country whose law names the product.
The can is recyclable and the pouch is not. Empty the can, separate the lid, and put the body in with rigid plastics; the used pouch goes in general waste. Every manufacturer says so, and so does Sweden’s waste authority. What none of them lead with is why the second half matters: a spent 6 mg pouch still holds roughly 2.5 mg of nicotine.
This looks like a tidiness question and it isn’t quite. I went into it expecting to write about polymer codes and kerbside collection, and the figure that reorganised the whole piece came from a German regulator’s table: after an hour in your mouth, somewhere between 41% and 50% of the nicotine is still sitting in the pouch. That is not an inert object. It is also, on the manufacturers’ own instructions, the object you are being told to pop back into the lid of a brightly coloured can.
So this page covers both things. What each part of the product actually is, where it goes, and why the used pouch deserves more care than the empty can does. If you want the ground floor rather than the disposal question, start with nicotine pouches explained.
What is actually still in the pouch you are holding
The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment — BfR, the federal agency that does Germany’s risk assessment on consumer products — published a health risk assessment of nicotine pouches in October 2022. Its table 3 reproduces a pharmacokinetic study in which the discarded pouches were weighed for what was left.
BfR’s own summary: “The discarded pouches were examined for their remaining nicotine content. The authors used these data to calculate nicotine extraction. Nicotine extraction was found to be 56% and 59% for the 3 mg and 6 mg doses, with only 32% of the nicotine being extracted from snus.”
Read that the other way round, which is the way that matters here. The subtraction below is mine, from BfR’s published figures.
| Product | Nicotine per portion | Extracted in use | Still in the spent portion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nicotine pouch | 3 mg | 1.59 mg (55.9%) | ≈1.4 mg |
| Nicotine pouch | 6 mg | 3.51 mg (59.1%) | ≈2.5 mg |
| Nicotine pouch | 8 mg | 3.79 mg (50.4%) | ≈4.2 mg |
| Swedish snus | 8 mg | 2.41 mg (32.0%) | ≈5.6 mg |
| American snus | 18 mg | 2.99 mg (18.9%) | ≈15 mg |
Now set that beside the FDA. In its September 2025 press announcement urging manufacturers towards child-resistant packaging, the agency wrote: “Toxic effects in young children have been reported with nicotine doses as low as 1 to 4 milligrams.”
A spent 3 mg pouch sits at the bottom of that band. A spent 6 mg pouch sits in the middle of it. A spent 8 mg pouch is above it, and a spent portion of traditional snus holds more nicotine than any of them, because snus gives up so much less of what it contains. I am not going to dress that up as an emergency — it is not — but it is the reason the disposal question is worth two minutes rather than none.
BfR also measured release rates itself, across fifteen products, and found them uneven: “most of the nicotine pouches released the majority (>80%) of their nicotine content within the period investigated” and “Accordingly, most of the nicotine is released within the first 20 minutes.” Take one out at ten minutes and there is proportionally more left. If you want the detail on how fast a pouch gives up its nicotine, that is covered in how fast a pouch hits and how long it lasts, and how to tell when a pouch is finished covers the other end of the same question.
BfR is a public body and says so: “The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) is a scientifically independent institution within the portfolio of the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL).” The study behind table 3 is not independent, and BfR flags that itself — “In this study, financed by a manufacturer”. The figures are the best measured answer there is; they came from a manufacturer-funded study, and you should know that when you read them.
The pouch cannot be recycled, and the makers say so first
This is the rare question where every publisher agrees, including the ones with a commercial reason not to.
Philip Morris, on ZYN’s UK site, is explicit that its own product fails on two counts: “While ZYN nicotine pouches are made from cellulose, a plant derived fibre, they cannot be recycled. Once they have been used, the products are contaminated with saliva, which means they are unsuitable for recycling. Additionally, nicotine is not recyclable either.” Elsewhere the same company publishes the blunter version: “The pouch, including its contents do not meet biodegradability standards; therefore, the pouch and its contents, should be disposed of in the trash with the general waste.” (The broken grammar is theirs.)
BAT says the same of VELO: “Nicotine pouches cannot be recycled.”
I looked for a counter-source and could not find one. No waste authority, no regulator and no manufacturer says a used nicotine pouch belongs in a recycling stream. That part is settled.
So is the pouch plant fibre, or is it plastic?
Here the agreement collapses completely, and the disagreement is more interesting than a resolved answer would have been. Four publishers, four framings:
- Philip Morris calls ZYN’s pouch “cellulose, a plant derived fibre”.
- The FDA, announcing the ZYN authorisations, described nicotine pouches as “small synthetic fiber pouches containing nicotine”. In the environmental assessment for those same products, written by FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products in January 2025, it went further: “The applicant provided information on the material composition of the pouches, which includes synthetic polymers and plastic materials. Some of these materials are known to be non-biodegradable or only slowly biodegradable.”
- Sweden’s environmental regulator, Naturvårdsverket, classes the pouch as a single-use plastic product outright — more on that below.
- Avfall Sverige, the Swedish waste management association, tells consumers on its sopor.nu site: “Snus innehåller plast och tungmetaller och ska kastas i restavfallet” — snus contains plastic and heavy metals and should be thrown in residual waste.
What is missing is a measurement. I searched the published literature for a characterisation of the pouch wall itself — the fleece, as against the filler inside it — and found none. The papers that describe pouch composition describe the filler: cellulose, salts, humectants, flavourings. The wall is the part nobody has analysed in print, and it is the part the whole plastic question turns on. Pouch fleece materials goes into what is known about it, which is less than you would expect for an object sold by the billion, and what is inside a nicotine pouch covers the filler.
My own reading: a regulator that has decided the product is a single-use plastic, and a second regulator whose environmental assessment records “synthetic polymers and plastic materials”, outweigh a marketing page that says plant fibre. But I am reporting four positions rather than resolving one, because resolving it would require a measurement that does not exist.
The can is polypropylene, and the one useful instruction comes from the maker
On the can itself the record is better. FDA’s paperwork for the ZYN range records the package as “Polypropylene Can and Polypropylene Lid”, and the environmental assessment adds that the can carries polyethylene film labels and ships in a paperboard carton. BAT names the polymer for VELO in prose: “Our new cans are made with a single polymer – Meaning it’s a single type of plastic (PP) that can be recycled. Previously, our cans were made with a combination of two plastics, which could not be recycled.” On labels it is unambiguous: “No, you don’t need to remove the labels in order to recycle the cans.”
Note what BAT is admitting there. Older VELO cans were two plastics and were not recyclable. The company’s US page is weaker still — “VELO Nicotine Pouches packaging may be recyclable in some areas; recycling rules vary by city or county” — with no polymer named at all. Same company, same product, two different claims on two continents. “Recyclable” and “accepted where you live” are not the same statement, and only the second one determines what happens to your can.
The sharpest illustration of that gap comes from Swedish Match, which in November 2020 stopped making black cans. Its marketing director at the time explained why: “De optiska system som används vid sortering av återvunna plastförpackningar har svårt att läsa av den svarta plasten, vilket ökar risken för att de istället förbränns.” The optical sorting systems at recycling plants struggle to read black plastic, so it is likelier to be burned instead. A black can made of recyclable polypropylene was, in practice, not recycled. That is a producer admitting the recyclable-versus-actually-recycled gap about its own packaging, and I have not seen a better one.
The same announcement carries the single most practical instruction I found anywhere, and it comes from the manufacturer rather than a blog: “Släng din tomma snusdosa i plaståtervinningen – och separera gärna lock och skräplock från asken.” Put the empty can in plastic recycling, and separate the lid and the catch-lid from the body. Nobody publishes whether the lid is the same polymer as the body; the maker’s advice to separate them implies it may not be.
What to do with each part
| Part | Where it goes | Whose instruction |
|---|---|---|
| Used pouch | General / residual waste. Never recycling, never the toilet, never the ground. | Philip Morris, BAT and Avfall Sverige all say this |
| Empty can body | Rigid plastic recycling, if your collection takes polypropylene. Empty it first. | FDA records the polymer; BAT and PMI both say recycle it |
| Lid and catch-lid | Separate from the body before recycling | Swedish Match |
| Label | Leave it on | BAT |
| Outer carton | Paper and card | FDA’s environmental assessment identifies it as paperboard |
| Unopened stock you are throwing away | Not ordinary rubbish if you are a business — see below | EPA |
One addition that is mine rather than anyone’s instruction: if your council does not take polypropylene, the can is not recyclable where you live, whatever the pack says. Check the collection rather than the claim. Can design varies more than you would think between brands, which is part of what the master ranking ends up reflecting, and the Swedish tobacco-snus can is a different object again — how to read a snus can covers what its markings mean.
On flushing — Avfall Sverige’s disposal instruction above is the authority’s own, and it exists because the behaviour is common enough to need an instruction. The same page carries survey figures on how many Swedish snus users flush their portions, but those come from a snus retailer rather than from the association, and I am not going to present a retailer’s survey as a measurement. The instruction stands on its own: residual waste.
The lid compartment is a bin, not a safe
Both major makers point you at the compartment in the lid. Philip Morris: “The lid on the top of the can is for temporarily keeping used pouches until you are able to find a trash can to throw them away.” And: “you can temporarily dispose of used ZYN nicotine pouches in the compartment on the lid of the pack” — followed immediately by “Please also remember to store and dispose of nicotine pouches in a place inaccessible to children.”
That is sensible advice for the street. It is worth holding it beside two other documents.
The FDA’s consumer page on storing nicotine pouches is written entirely about accidental exposure: “Nicotine pouches can be dangerous to children if they use, touch, chew on, or eat them.” It records that “Approximately 72% of reported nicotine pouch exposure cases occurred in children under 5 years of age” over the three years to March 2025, notes that “Nicotine pouches can also harm pets”, and observes that the containers “can even resemble candy containers”. America’s Poison Centers, in its September 2025 advisory, reported that cases “increased 202% from 2022 to 2024” and warned that “swallowing even part of one can cause poisoning.”
So: the can is engineered against exactly this. FDA’s review records that the ZYN products are “packaged in certified child-resistant polypropylene cans and safety lids, which reduce the risk of accidental exposure in children”, certified by testing under 16 CFR 1700.20. But the child-resistant mechanism is the main compartment, opened by breaking a perforated label and twisting. The catch-lid is not that. It is a shallow tray you flip open with a thumb, holding spent pouches that each still carry a milligram or two.
Which gives you the actual rule, and it is a small one: the lid compartment is for the walk between here and a bin. Empty it when you get to one. Don’t let it become the place used pouches live, and don’t leave the can on a low table with four of them in the top. If you want the broader picture on what too much nicotine looks like, signs of too much nicotine sets out what the regulators actually list.
Where the law reaches this, and where it says nothing at all
Three jurisdictions, three different answers, and the gaps are as informative as the rules.
The United States: the line is unused versus used. Nicotine is a listed acute hazardous waste. The entry at 40 CFR 261.33 reads “Nicotine, & salts (this listing does not include patches, gums and lozenges that are FDA-approved over-the-counter nicotine replacement therapies)”, waste code P075. A nicotine pouch is not an FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapy, so the carve-out does not reach it.
But the listing is for commercial chemical products, and the regulation’s own comment limits it to “all formulations in which the chemical is the sole active ingredient”, adding that it “does not refer to a material, such as a manufacturing process waste, that contains any of the substances listed”. EPA put the principle plainly in the 2019 rule that created the NRT exemption: P-listed chemicals are hazardous “when discarded in unused form”. So the stream EPA is regulating is unsold and expired stock, not the thing in your hand. In the same rule the agency declined to extend relief any further — “the Agency cannot support exempting e-cigarettes and nicotine-containing e-liquids from the P075 listing” — on the reasoning that NRTs are regulated as drugs while those products are regulated as tobacco products. Pouches sit on the tobacco-product side of that line.
For a household the question does not arise anyway: 40 CFR 261.4(b)(1) excludes household waste from the hazardous waste rules entirely. For a shop or an office clearing out unopened stock, it may well arise, and that is a question for a waste contractor rather than for this page.
One clean negative worth printing: I searched the full text of that 2019 rule — all 134 Federal Register pages of it — and the word “pouch” does not appear once. EPA has said nothing about oral nicotine pouches in either direction.
The EU: the obvious instrument does not reach pouches. The Single-Use Plastics Directive is the law that made tobacco producers pay for litter clean-up. Its relevant annex entry is “Tobacco products with filters and filters marketed for use in combination with tobacco products” — and a pouch has no filter. A tobacco-free pouch is not a tobacco product at all under the EU definition, which requires a product to “consist, even partly, of tobacco”. Traditional snus is a tobacco product, but still has no filter. Either way, out.
The can is a different matter. Under the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, which applies from 12 August 2026, the can is plainly packaging and the producer carries extended producer responsibility for it. From August 2028 packaging must also carry a harmonised sorting label “containing information on its material composition in order to facilitate consumer sorting”, which should eventually make the polypropylene question answerable from the can itself rather than from a company blog.
Sweden: one country has already named the product. This is the find of the research, and it corrects an assumption I started with. Swedish ordinance förordning (2021:996), § 27, imposes a consumer-information duty on anyone placing “tuggummi, portionssnus, sanitetsbindor, tamponger eller tampongapplikatorer” on the Swedish market as single-use plastic products — chewing gum, portion snus, and sanitary products. Naturvårdsverket, the regulator, defines the term so that it reaches tobacco-free pouches: “Portion snus refers to pouches that are single-use plastic products and contain tobacco products or snus consisting of nicotine fillers or flavourings.” The duty has applied since 1 January 2022.
That is a national environmental regulator deciding, in a binding instrument, that your nicotine pouch is a single-use plastic product. It is also the only place in the world I could find where a waste authority names the product at all. I checked municipal and national guidance in the UK, the US and Canada: they have entries for cigarette packets and entries for vapes, and nothing for pouches. The category falls straight through the gap.
Frequently asked questions
Can I put the used pouch back in the can and recycle the whole thing?
No. Both makers say to empty the can before recycling it, and the pouch is not recyclable in any stream. A can with spent pouches in the lid is a contaminated container.
Is the can actually recyclable where I live?
That depends on whether your collection takes rigid polypropylene, not on what the pack says. BAT’s US page concedes the point directly: recyclability “vary[s] by city or county”. Check your council’s list for PP or plastic number 5.
Do I need to rinse it?
BAT says to make sure the can is clean and empty. Nobody specifies rinsing. Empty and dry is the practical standard for rigid plastics generally.
Are nicotine pouches biodegradable?
No, and the manufacturer says so: “The pouch, including its contents do not meet biodegradability standards”. FDA’s environmental assessment separately records materials “known to be non-biodegradable or only slowly biodegradable”.
Is a used pouch dangerous to a pet?
It still contains nicotine — roughly 1.4 to 4 mg depending on the strength, on BfR’s figures — and FDA explicitly warns that pouches can harm pets. A bin a dog can get into is the risk, not the pouch itself.
What about the empty cans I have been collecting?
Separate lids from bodies and recycle the lot where polypropylene is taken. If your can is black, be aware that optical sorting struggles with black plastic, which is why Swedish Match stopped making them.
Sources
- BfR, Health risk assessment of nicotine pouches, updated opinion no. 023/2022, 7 October 2022. Table 3 and the release-rate section. BfR describes itself as a scientifically independent institution within the portfolio of the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture; it notes that the pharmacokinetic study behind table 3 was financed by a manufacturer.
- US EPA, 40 CFR part 261 — § 261.33 (P075 listing and the commercial chemical product comment), § 261.4(b)(1) (household waste exclusion), § 261.7 (empty containers).
- US EPA, Management Standards for Hazardous Waste Pharmaceuticals and Amendment to the P075 Listing for Nicotine, 84 FR 5816, 22 February 2019, effective 21 August 2019.
- FDA, Properly Store Nicotine Pouches to Prevent Accidental Exposure to Children and Pets, content current as of 2 September 2025.
- FDA, FDA urges nicotine pouch manufacturers to use child-resistant packaging, 2 September 2025 — the 1 to 4 milligram figure.
- FDA Center for Tobacco Products, Programmatic Environmental Assessment for Marketing Orders for New Nicotine Pouch Products Marketed by Swedish Match USA Inc., 2 January 2025.
- America’s Poison Centers, Health Advisory: Increase in Nicotine Pouch-Related Cases Reported to U.S. Poison Centers, 18 September 2025.
- Naturvårdsverket, Single-use plastic products and other disposable products — the definition of portion snus and the 1 January 2022 commencement.
- Förordning (2021:996) om engångsprodukter, 27 §.
- Avfall Sverige / sopor.nu, 1 September 2025. The disposal instruction is the association’s; the survey figures on the same page are a snus retailer’s and are not used here.
- Directive (EU) 2019/904 on single-use plastics, annex parts D, E and G; Directive 2014/40/EU article 2(4) and 2(8) for the tobacco product definition; Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste, articles 3, 12 and 45, applying from 12 August 2026.
- Philip Morris / Swedish Match: How to dispose of and recycle ZYN, 27 June 2025; Is the ZYN pouch biodegradable?; What is the lid on the top of the can for?; How to dispose of ZYN nicotine pouches. Company sources.
- BAT: VELO sustainability page (Ireland) and VELO US FAQ. Company sources.
- Swedish Match, Swedish Match slopar svart plast, 6 November 2020. Company source.
Last verified 28 October 2026.
