Recycle this for Earth Day: What you can and can’t put in those blue recycle bins
Recycling household waste is easier than ever. But that’s because there are fewer items accepted into curbside bins. The restrictions come mostly from the difficulties in separating paper, glass, plastic and other items in automated sorting facilities.
“There’s only so much manpower to separate things,” said Lisa Werner, the city of Tacoma’s recycle center and household hazard waste supervisor. “And there’s only so much equipment and they only have so much ability to discern.”
Putting banned items in your curbside bin will eventually result in machine shutdowns and lost productivity. State and local recycling watchdogs would rather have you toss once potentially recyclable items into the garbage instead of mucking up the recycling system.
“When it doubt, throw it out,” is the industry’s mantra.
“It’s a tough concept,” Werner said. “Because we want to do the right thing.”
But fear not, well-intentioned recycler, you can still recycle plenty of waste items. First, you’ve got to know what goes where.
Recycling hygiene
When the state Department of Ecology began its Recycle Right campaign in 2019 it focused on good recycling hygiene. Specifically, the need to make sure everything that goes into the recycling stream is clean and dry.
The latest push is keep plastic bags out of curbside bins, said Dan Weston, DOE’s statewide recycling coordinator. While it might be handy to use bags for hauling and dumping your aluminum cans and paper into the recycle bin just be sure to either reuse or put those bags in the trash.
“None of the waste haulers, none of the local governments want recyclables to come in bags,” he said.
Washington’s statewide ban on plastic bags doesn’t mean they’re not out there in the wild. They’ve just gotten thicker in order to qualify as reusable. But if they’re old or new, thin or thick, the message from haulers is consistent: Don’t put them in curbside containers.
“We were finding that people who consider themselves knowledgeable recyclers didn’t realize that this action was actually harming the system,” Weston said.
Recyclables sorting is now done largely by machines and those plastic bags create two big headaches. One is that the bagged contents need to be pulled out it order to sort them correctly. The bigger problem is the tendency of plastic bags to get stuck in and shut down machines.
In the industry, plastic bags are called tanglers. The same term is used for garden hoses, wire, holiday lights, coat hangers, ropes and other items that should just be tossed in the trash.
What to do with those bags
Plastic bags can be recycled, but they need to be delivered by consumers to recycling centers and placed in their own separate bins.
On Friday morning, a steady stream of vehicles was pulling up at the Tacoma recycling center next to the city’s transfer station on South Mullen Street. Drivers, couples and sometimes entire families would emerge with boxes and bags of various items they would carefully dump into dozens of segregated containers.
Several of the containers at the center are designated for plastic bags. When full, they are hauled off to a vendor and turned into phone cases, decking and other items, Werner said.
Werner reached into one of the containers and pulled out old-fashioned thin bags, thick newer bags, bags that once held Costco-sized units of toilet paper. They’re all recyclable if they’re clean and dry.
Recycling centers aren’t the only location for bag recycling. Most large grocery stores have bins at their entrances for bag recycling. Grocery stores use bags and plastic film, often wrapped around pallets of food. Most of it gets recycled.
Guilt
Feeling guilty when you toss something in the trash while wondering if you could recycle it? Don’t be, say Weston and Werner.
“If you’re not sure that that item should go in your (recycle) bin, just put it in the garbage because you could be doing more harm than good,” Weston said.
Citizens will sometimes clean take-out food containers and medicine bottles and put those in curbside bins. But those items can’t be recycled — anywhere.
“There’s all sorts of regulations,” Werner said. “We don’t even take them here. You can tell they’re scrubbed and spotless, no labels.”
Both Werner and Weston said they appreciate the public’s drive to recycle. They just want to make it easier on all fronts.
“I’ve had a lot of people reach out and just say ‘I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do that.’,” Weston said. “And those people, it’s really easy just to change their minds because they want to do the right thing.”
The curbside list
Put these clean and dry items in your curbside bin:
- Aluminum cans.
- “Tin” food cans.
- Paper.
- Cardboard.
- Plastic water and milk bottles, jugs and containers for cleaning products.
The ‘never’ list
These are some of the more common items that recyclers see in curbside bins that should always go in the trash:
- Styrofoam takeout food containers.
- Packing “peanuts”.
- Pill and medicine bottles/containers.
- Lids. It doesn’t matter if they’re plastic or metal. All lids of any material should go in the trash.
- Small pieces of metal.
Take these to a recycling center
As with curbside recycling, everything taken to a recycling center should be clean and dry.
- Plastic bags.
- Glass containers and bottles. They no longer need to be sorted by color.
- Larger pieces of metal.
- Rigid styrofoam, like the kind used in product packaging.
- Batteries.
Note: None of these lists are comprehensive. Consult information provided by your refuse hauler or recycling center for detailed lists.
This story was originally published April 22, 2023 at 5:01 AM.
