What shouldn't go in the recycle bin?

Plastic bags

• It’s a very common mistake to place your recyclables into a plastic grocery bag and then place that bag in the bin. Please do not do this!
• Plastic bags cannot be recycled at the MRF, and in fact, can wrap around the screens. This can stop the machine and then stop the entire process.
• Instead, take your clean, empty plastic bags back to the grocery store for recycling. Most grocery stores have a bin just for that purpose.

Pizza boxes

• Corrugated cardboard is usually recyclable, but only if it’s free of grease.
• What to do? Place the clean top of your pizza box in the recycling bin and throw away the greasy bottom in compost.
• Plastic containers that held food, like a peanut butter jar, should be as empty as possible.
• And while you don’t want to waste too much water cleaning your recyclables, a quick rinse will be appreciated by your local recycling facility! The cleaner an item is the more value it will have as a recycled material.

Dirty plastic food containers

• Shredded paper
• Drinking glass, mirrors and ceramics
• Soiled paper, diapers
• Flexible plastics, like plastic wrap, juice pouches and garden hoses
• Plastic or metal clothes hangers – we recommend taking those back to your dry cleaners or donating them.

What happens when you put the wrong items in the recycling bin?

• Contamination occurs when non-recyclable or dirty items are mixed in with clean recyclable content.
• Recyclables are worth a lot of money to the manufacturers that use them, but only when they are high quality!
• Generally speaking, our recyclables are taken to state-of the-art automated recycling centers called MRFs, which use magnets, eddy currents and optical scanners to sort and bale our pile of recyclables into usable materials.
• When the wrong thing – like a plastic bag or a garden hose – ends up in the system, it can really break things down and cause major delays.
• It contributes to the overall contamination of the recycling stream so the material is removed and landfilled.
• It can break the recycling equipment.

I want to recycle more materials – why doesn’t the industry try to recycle those materials?

• Our industry continues to innovate so that there continue to be more options and access to recycling.
• Some items that can’t be put into the single-stream bin have alternative options.
• We also continue to advance the technology so that even more items can be recycled.