Introduction
Your curbside pickup (or apartment recycle drop-off), may only accept a fraction of your recyclable items. This article will help identify your recyclable items and take to the appropriate drop-off locations.
Recyclable Categories
Did you know? Your curbside pickup can only accept 20% of your recyclable items. Most other items like crinkly flexible films, rigid plastics, Styrofoam you can only drop off to your local recyclers like Cincinnati Recycling & Reuse Hub.
Curbside Pickup Accepted Items
Most of the curbside pickup companies only accept limited items. Following are the items accepted by our are recycling company Rumpke. Cincinnati area folks! For an up-to-date acceptable items, visit Rumpke's official acceptable items page.
Do not put any kind of flexible plastic films, in your curbside bin. This includes, grocery bag, zip-locks, frozen vegetables bags etc. They accept only very few rigid plastics in the tub form. None of the other rigid plastics like cookie trays, carryout-boxes.
Store Drop-off Acceptable Items
Store drop-off refers to plastic bag recycling bins, that you will find at the entrance of your retail stores like Kroger, Target, Walmart, Meijer.
They accept flexible plastic films, numbered 2 and 4. Examples: Plastic Grocery bags (We suggest taking your reusable bag, so that you don't even have to recycle 😀), Amazon Mailers, Newspaper bag, bread / bagel bags, Clean Zip-lock bags (We wash and reuse multiple times), shipping air pillows.
Cincinnati Recycle and Reuse Hub
Your local recycling centers like Cincinnati Recycling and Reuse Hub.
Here you can recycle your Store Drop-offs, Flexible Plastic Films not accepted by your store drop-off and other items like Styrofoam, denim, foot-ware, metal, to-go boxes, plastic planters, aluminum trays and more. Checkout some pictures, that I took.
Item Labeling Standards
There are 2 popular standards in US. The newer one is How2Recycle. Their labels are big, clear and easy. The other standard is the 1-7 Resin Codes
Electronic Recycling
Most electronic recyclables, drop in places like Best Buy.
Conclusion
Reducing, Reusing are always better than recycling. Use re-usable grocery bags. Avoid use and throw stuff. Find and shop eco-friendly items, that are durable and repairable.