What can't be recycled?

Jan 08, 2024 Last reply: 2 years ago 15 Replies

My neighbor puts out his recycling & trash (blue, green, gray) every week. I put mine out once a month (blue always, sometimes green, never gray).



Blue is typical stuff like paper, glass, plastic, cardboard, etc. Green is landscaping, where I only put out weeds with seeds. Gray is trash, where I simply don't have anything to put out.



To be more descriptive, I have a bucket in the kitchen for foodstuffs, where NOTHING goes down the drain except water and bits that get past the drain stop (or whatever you call that thing) which goes to compost.



I shred my mail which also goes to compost, unless it's "shiny" stuff, or plastic stuff, in which case it goes into the blue recycling bucket.



A lot of people don't compost bones and meats but what we do is put them in a dish outside where the wild animals get it within hours, so it ends up as compost spread by those animals (fox, coyote, corvids, etc.). I even put the mousetraps mice into that same dish & it always disappears in hours (I do not and simply will not use poison bait or inhumane sticky traps!).



I compost all my landscaping, which is appreciable, so I have a hillock about thirty feet square, where every year I throw more on top and water it and toss and turn it with a pitchfork, etc., which creates nice compost in a few years (it's always there so there's always old done & new compost).



I burn logs in the fireplace and branches sliced up with the chop saw for the pizza oven, so there's nothing left of an entire tree when I'm done.



The only things that go into the green bucket are poison oak and bay detritus (as it carries the sudden oak death disease) and weed seeds.



What's left to put in the (always empty) gray trash bin (but styrofoam)?


Most single-use plastics.

They're recycleable and make great, if odiferous fertilizer.

But isn't that under composting? You don't make new fish from the old fish.

Several years ago, it was learned that a lot of the items that were accepted in the Blue Box as recyclable - were not actually recycled. Some had no means of recycle ; some had negative value and simply went to the landfill ; some were too difficult and costly to sort - and went to the landfill. Great numbers of shipping containers were loaded and sent overseas - supposedly to be recycled - but unfortunately just dumped in their backyard.

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Rather than Reduce Reuse Recycle it should be Reduce Reduce Reduce .. John T.

It ends up as C, H, O, N and other elements that will eventually be part of some molecule in food for new fish.

My father buried the leftovers from cleaning the fish next to corn plants. I was amazed as a child by how much bigger and greener those plants were.

Fish or banana peels for tomatoes. Some of the old gardeners had a lot of tricks like that. Egg shells, coffee grounds, etc.

The recycling containers here are marked "no hot ashes".

Wise, indeed. You can always let them cool first.

Hot ashes are pretty hard on plastic recycling boxes - - -

W Tue, 9 Jan 2024 23:11:12 -0500, Ed P napisal:

Which category bin do the old non-refillable propane canisters go? And what about old alkaline batteries?

Our recycling center takes the propane tanks and empties them for metal

Lowes will take the batteries. They can be somewhat recyled but not everything in them.

Depends on where you live. Around here, ACE hardware will accept old batteries, and the propane canisters get dropped off at the county hazardous waste facility.

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