One of the consequences of making things with oils and herbs is that you acquire a collection of bottles and jars. When you find potential containers for your ingredients and creations, many of them come with unwanted labels.
Removing labels from jars and bottles is a chore. I’ll return to the subject with some of my techniques, but first here’s a story that has just a passing relevance to the subject.
Internment
During 09 and 10 August 1971 the British Army seized 342 people suspected of involvement with the Irish Republican Army. These people were imprisoned without trial in a makeshift concentration camp on the site of a former RAF station at Long Kesh, 10 miles West of Belfast. All those arrested were Irish Nationalists and, with few exceptions, Catholic. The operation was justified by the Northern Ireland and British Governments as a measure to reduce the incidence of violence in the Province of Northern Ireland. No Protestant Ulster Loyalists were arrested, although Loyalist paramilitaries also routinely carried out acts of violence. The arrests lead to mass protests and a sharp increase in sectarian violence.
Internment continued until 05 December 1975 when the last 46 internees were released. The total number of internees was 1,981, of whom 1,874 were Catholic/Republican and 107 were Protestant/Loyalist.
During the years following 1971 the site at Long Kesh was developed with new prison blocks and a perimeter wall. In plan the new prison blocks resembled a letter ‘H’. They were colloquially known as ‘The H Blocks’. The site was renamed as Her Majesty’s Prison Maze. By the end of internment many who had been interned had stood trial and been convicted of crimes relating to civil violence. These prisoners were accorded Special Category Status and held in the H Blocks.
Loyalist Prison Officers contrasted the Special Category Prisoners with what they called “Ordinary Decent Criminals”. In 1978 a group of Special Category Prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms, claiming that they were political prisoners rather than criminals. They were denied their own clothes, so wore only blankets. They refused to leave their cells to wash or use a lavatory, smearing their own excrement on the walls of their cells. This became known as the “Dirty Protest”.
When the wind changes
I spent 4½ months in 1978 on a tour of active duty in Northern Ireland. My unit was tasked with guarding HMP Maze. It was rare that anyone asked what we were guarding against, and there was never an answer to the question. As we battled the boredom of hours spent in watchtowers we were ignorant of the violence that the Loyalist Prison Officers inflicted on Republican prisoners in the H Blocks. The level of violence caused the European Court of Human Rights to censure the British Government for “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”. The Dirty Protest was, in part, a response by prisoners to being beaten senseless by Prison Officers if they left their cells to use showers or lavatories.
The stench from the H Blocks was extreme. A change in the wind direction brought little relief. When we were not downwind of the H Blocks, we were downwind of the nearby glue factory. The factory made glue by boiling up animal bones from meat-processing plants. The smell from the factory chimneys was at least as vile as the smell emanating from the H Blocks, and possibly more pervasive.
Both the prison and the glue factory are closed now.
Which brings us back to glue, and labels, and jars and bottles.
Soaking off the Labels
The glue from the Belfast glue factory was water-soluble. Water-soluble glue was extensively used on labels, as it was on postage stamps. Stamp collectors separated postage stamps from envelopes by immersing them in water. Anyone wanting to re-use a glass bottle or jam-jar could use the same method. The label normally drifted off the glass and remained intact at the bottom of the bowl of water.
Most modern glues are based on petrochemicals.
Sometimes a simple soaking still works. It’s worth an attempt. If it doesn’t work, then I start to work through some other techniques.
Other Techniques
Here’s how I set about removing labels…
Plastic Labels
Plastic labels are stronger than paper ones, so I can often lift a corner and peel off the whole label:
Often there’s a sticky residue left where the label has been removed. Sometimes the residue covers the whole area that the label covered. In this case it just leaves a few sticky patches:
The sticky residue can be removed using solvents, which I’ll discuss further down this post.
Paper Labels
It might be possible to lift a corner and peel off a paper label. It’s rare. The difficulty arises because the glue holds the label to surface more securely than the fibres in the paper stick to each other. Instead of the paper coming off the surface, the paper splits internally. One layer of paper comes away, and the other remains stuck to the glue:
I can usually remove most of the paper by scraping with a knife, but there comes a moment when the effort that I’m expending doesn’t seem to be reflected in what I’m removing. If I haven’t soaked the label in water before, this is when I soak it for a while and then try to scrape off some more of the paper.
Glue Residues
After a combination of peeling, scraping and soaking there is invariably something still stuck to my bottle or jar. There is always a glue residue. Sometimes there’s still some stubborn paper as well:
The solution to removing glue and paper residues is to find an effective solvent.
Solvents
I’ve already used the most readily available solvent – water. Here are three more to try:
Alcohol
Alcohol mixes well with water (and other things!). If I can’t remove a residue with water, experience tells me that I’m unlikely to be able to remove it with alcohol.
I still think alcohol deserves a mention here. Once I’ve managed to remove most of a glue residue, there are usually dull smear marks on the surface. A little alcohol on cotton wool or kitchen paper will remove the smears and leave the surface sparkling.
I use Isopropyl Alcohol. It’s cheap, effective, and it has other uses besides polishing up surfaces. Vodka or gin would work, but they are subject to duty and so they are more expensive. They too have other uses.
Acetone
Outside industrial contexts, acetone is most familiar as the active ingredient in nail polish remover. It’s the only ingredient in most nail polish removers. You can buy 15ml of branded nail polish remover for about GBP 8. That works out at over GBP 500 for a litre of acetone. Alternatively, you can buy a litre of generic acetone for about GBP 10.
Acetone is highly flammable. it is normally very effective at removing glue residues. However, in addition to its flammability it has two other drawbacks:
While it is safe to use acetone on glass or ceramic surfaces, it is definitely not safe to use on plastic or resin surfaces. Acetone is just as effective a solvent for plastics and resins as it is for glue residues.
The smell! Acetone belongs to the family of chemicals called ketones. It has a smell reminiscent of the sweets called pear drops, but the smell is much more powerful.
Paraffin
Paraffin is my solvent of choice for removing glue residues.
The fact that paraffin is used as a fuel indicates that it is flammable.
Once paraffin was extensively used in the UK as a fuel for domestic heating. Although domestic paraffin heaters and paraffin heaters for greenhouses are still advertised, I can’t remember the last time I saw either of the iconic brands Esso Blue or Pink Paraffin offered for sale.
The paraffin sold for heating suffers from one of the drawbacks of acetone. It has a pervasive and unpleasant smell. Fortunately, there is a version of paraffin that doesn’t have such a pervasive odour, and it’s readily available.
The paraffin I use is sold as lamp oil, for use in decorative oil-lamps. There are scented and unscented, clear and coloured versions available. I use the unscented and uncoloured version which I can buy by the litre for about GBP 7. I’ve been using this bottle for a while:
I find a litre bottle is a bit unwieldy when I only use enough to moisten a small piece of absorbent paper at any one time. I’ve decanted some into a 50ml laboratory reagent bottle for regular use, and to limit the amount of flammable liquid that I keep in the house:
Paraffin removes most glue residues. I soak a small piece of kitchen paper with paraffin. I use that to wet the glue residue and any remaining paper that is stuck to the surface I’m trying to clean. After that it’s just a case of rubbing with the moistened paper to clean the surface. The paraffin eventually evaporates completely and the surface is ready for a final polish with a little alcohol.
Other Techniques
I take the attitude that there is only so much effort I’m prepared to expend to remove a label. If a label won’t yield to my regime of soaking, scraping and solvents, then I tend to give up and find a more productive use of my time. However, I can imagine a situation when a jar or bottle was just too good to abandon, despite a very stubborn label.
There are a couple of other approaches that have been recommended, and that have some credibility. I haven’t tried them (yet), but you might find them useful or interesting.
Heat
Glue may melt if it is heated. So a glue that doesn’t soften when it is soaked in cold or warm water might be susceptible to softening in hot or boiling water.
It may also be possible to soften glue, and particularly glue residues, using dry heat. I might try putting the jars or bottles in an oven, or I could use the heat gun I use to even up the surface of container candles:
The reason I avoid using high temperatures to remove labels is that I’m averse to burning my fingers. Once I’d got a label or residue hot, I’d still have to peel or scrape it. I think that would be difficult when wearing heat-proof gloves.
Peanut Butter
I don’t regularly keep peanut butter in the house. If I did I would be tempted to try using it to remove glue residues from glass or ceramic surfaces. The vegetable oil in peanut butter could be an effective solvent for petrochemical glue, and the ground peanuts would act as an abrasive paste to clean the surface.