Recycling Upended & What You Can Do to Recycle Right

These are the most common items that should not be in a recycling bin or cart AND the most harmful. Plastic grocery bags get caught up in the recycling machinery and can cause the entire system to shut down so they can be manually removed. If you wish to recycle plastic bags, most grocery stores have a specially designated bin for unwanted plastic bags. Otherwise, place them in the garbage.

One of the most common offenders! Although they are made of cardboard, the grease and food waste from the pizza contaminates the cardboard. If you want a gold star from Mother Earth, tear off the untarnished or clean parts and recycle them!

Another food residue offender are take-out containers and those delicious baked goodies boxes. Only recycle these if they are free of food waste and residue from food like icing.

These beverage cartons are often coated with a thin wax layer and thus cannot be recycled by many haulers or recycling facilities.

Single-stream recycling facilities are not equipped with the specialized equipment to recycle Styrofoam so toss it in with your garbage.

Yep, this makes the list of common offenders. The plastic from diapers cannot be salvaged and it’s just plain disgusting!

Take care to cover your recyclables to keep them safe from elements like rain and snow. Wet paper should be discarded with the trash, because once it’s wet it’s difficult or impossible to recycle - and a total mess.

Don’t be fooled by the metal! Chemicals are used to pressurize these cans earning them the classification of household hazardous waste, which means they cannot be placed in with recyclables or with the garbage. These must be taken for disposal with other household hazardous waste.

Help us keep our workers safe and not expose them to illness or blood borne diseases. Properly dispose of used needles and do not put them in the recycling.

Glass items like mirrors, window panes, light bulbs, dishes, and flower pots are not recyclable at the curb and could be dangerous. Light bulbs can often be recycled at hardware and home improvement stores. Consider donating gently used items to someone else who can reuse them. One man’s trash is another’s treasure!

Throwing batteries in regular trash or recycling bins can spark devastating, hard-to-extinguish fires that destroy homes, garbage trucks and facilities. You can easily prevent these disasters by dropping them off at a certified collection site via the Battery Network Locator.

This can be a confusing one. While regular copy paper is recyclable, shredding paper reduces its size so dramatically that it cannot be sorted at the facility. Because the machines sort broken glass and other debris by size, the shredded paper often gets destroyed or disposed of because it ends up in the wrong place and cannot be recycled properly.

If it can’t fit in a cart or bin, then safe to say it cannot be recycled. Car parts and scrap metal would do a number on the recycling machinery and could hurt our workers, too.

All not recyclable. All hazardous. These must be taken for disposal to a hazardous waste disposal facility.