Top 10 Things You Cannot Recycle & How to Recycle Properly

How can you recycle like you mean it? Let's start with the top ten things you "cannot" recycle. 

1. Plastic Bags.  You may be able to bring them to your supermarket
2.  Items the size of a credit card, such as straws, plastic utensils, coffee pods, and credit cards.
3. Dirty food containers. General rule: if you cannot clean it before recycling it, you can't recycle it.  Food boxes impacted with food are an absolute no.   Dirty ketchup bottles are a no as well.
4. Plastic-coated paper, such as the interior coating of a coffee cup, is used to make the paper stronger. 
5. Plastics that are numbers 1 & 2 are the gold standard of recycling, yes. If you do not know what that means, go look at the number on the bottom of your detergent bottle, if the number doesn’t match with your local recycling program, it’s not recyclable.  

Pro Tip: Plastics with #4, #5, and #7 were recycled before 2018.

The recycling of these particular plastic containers was largely dependent on markets outside the USA. In 2018, China, which received most of these plastics, implemented a policy known as the National Sword. This resulted in greater restrictions on the importation of recyclables of any kind. Markets for #4, #5, and #7 plastics are now almost non-existent.

1. Plastic film, or bubble wrap, is a no.
2. Clothing hangers, metal or plastic
3. Ice cream containers
4. Styrofoam, but you already knew that.
5. Windows and mirrors

How to Recycle Properly

If there is one thing I have learned is that people do not know how to recycle properly. Working in an environmental company, all I have to do is look into the multiple blue recycling cans located in every room of our office and see where recycling efforts are failing.

Let’s start with the history of recycling. People had to be trained to recycle, so centers were established and programs implemented to create local recycling programs. Since facilities were not just built and waiting for materials, many early recycling collections sent the material to landfills. This was part of training people to recycle instead of throwing recyclable materials in the trash, even if the recycling went to a landfill.

To make you feel better, paper has been recycled for decades, and initially, trucking containers were dropped in shopping centers and central areas in populated areas where you could drive your newspapers (yep, dating myself here with newspapers), bottles,  and aluminum cans where you placed them in designated areas for pickup and transportation to recycling centers. Heck, cans and bottles in some states had 5-cent and 10-cent deposits that you could reclaim when you brought your cans and bottles to designated recycling centers.

All these end-user labor-intensive recycling operations were replaced with home and business pickup of recycled material. Initially, you had to segregate plastic from glass, bottles from paper, and then Single Stream Recycling was implemented, which allowed you to place all your recyclables in one container to be sorted at the recycling facility. This simplified approach to recycling created optimism never before seen in recycling and created a term called Wish Cycling. Meaning items that no one ever said were recyclable were considered recyclable by consumers and thrown into the single-stream bin. Items seen include ceramic coffee cups, leaded wine glasses, Nerf footballs, and of course, used pizza boxes.  None of these are actually recyclable under current programs and end up being segregated and landfilled. Food-impacted containers paper or peanut butter containers, are also not recyclable. Used pizza box no way.

What can you recycle?

Newspapers, magazines, junk mail with no cellophane window, cardboard boxes

• Plastic water bottles
• Beer bottles and cans
• Clean food containers

Pro Tip

When in doubt, throw it out.

Google your local recycling program, which will list what can and cannot be recycled.