How To Dispose of a Broken Mirror Safely: Part 1
Listen, we know things happen in life. Heck, life happens. Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan - and that’s ok!
Breaking a mirror is serious business and not just because of the age of old superstition. Broken mirrors are dangerous objects in themselves and can lead to a lot of severe injuries, even when you’re prepared. For example, an aggregate of different studies recently revealed that as much as 13% of all emergency room traumas come from glass!
On top of that, knowing just what to do with all of your shards of broken glass can be tricky, given there are few materials that discuss just how to recycle mirrors effectively.
With all of that in mind, we’ve set up a 2-part guide on how to best approach disposing of a broken mirror and how you can minimize the risk of serious injury from jagged glass.
Safety Supplies
The simplest way to manage your own safety is to ensure you have as much personal protection you can gather. Tools for grabbing, collecting, and transporting sharp objects are going to be crucial.
Even better, make sure you have the proper clothing is vital as well. Make sure you have some good shoes or boots on to keep your feet safe. Wearing long-sleeved clothing and long pants is similarly helpful and will give you at least a little protection from any stray pieces of glass.
Gloves are the most essential piece of clothing you can wear for this job as well—strong gloves made from leather, such as gardening gloves, are ideal.
As a guide, here’s a simple list of handy items you may have around the house that can help when handling a broken mirror:
- Boxes
- Blankets
- Newspapers
- Trash Bags
- Bubble Wrap
- Tape
Each of these items is extremely useful and can help massively with transportation. As well as that, using these items when handling glass also protects others from potential harm as well.
Wrapping Up
The next thing you’ll want to do is actually start packing your mirror away, preferably by using the supplies listed above.
As a recommendation, we’d start by wrapping your mirror in bubble wrap or an old blanket. This will help contain any loose shards in the frame and stop contact with any sharp edges. Then, completely wrap up your mirror and seal your bubble wrap or blanket with liberal amounts of tape to ensure nothing comes loose.
When it comes to tape, we wholly recommend using the toughest tape you have. Duck Tape is ideal, but packing tape can also work as well. Painting tape or masking tape should be avoided as options as these are simply not strong enough to seal your wrapping nor contain the sharp edges of broken glass.
While it’s tempting to try and gather loose glass to place in your wrapping as well, we’d recommend avoiding that. Loose glass eventually finds a way out, and this will definitely increase your handling time and risk of injury.
That’s it for the first part of our guide on handling and disposing of a broken mirror. Be sure to check back on Friday with part 2, where we’ll cover the process you should take for smaller pieces of glass, transportation, and final clean-up.
