View Full Version : Recycling household waste when you don’t have the service
My condo complex does not offer recycling as part of trash service. I’d like to begin recycling my household waste, but I cannot find anywhere that will take it. I’m a single person household so not a ton of stuff.
I’ve called my town and they referred me to the town’s contracted trash hauler, who can’t help me since they don’t service my complex and don’t deal with individuals.
Taking it to work is not an option. No recycling there except for cardboard in the warehouse.
Googling, I found options for electronics and such, but nothing for my situation. Any ideas? I’m talking about small amounts of plastic containers, milk jugs, junk mail/paper, glass, etc.
Our local grocery Loblaws chain has a 3-bins set up at the entrance. Plastic and paper recycling and waste. Walmart has a similar setup, I believe. Would that idea be a possibility?
Before we had curbside service, we hauled it all (every 3 months), to the local recycling business. They had a bin outside for each type of item.
Teacher Terry
12-27-19, 11:11am
I used to do the same as Gard before curbside recycling. Considering that only 9% of what we put in recycling actually gets recycled since China quit taking it probably not worth the effort.
ApatheticNoMore
12-27-19, 1:10pm
I hear you. I dump in in my mom's recyling bin is my solution and they don't take all that many plastics anymore either, so many I just trash. And I don't leave CRV recycling there as it will be hoarded.
Recycling has become very near impossible. A local recycling business, none exist except that take the recycling that has a fee attached (CRV) and increasingly few of those (that program is a whole scam of it's own with charging us fees it's so hard to get back as all the recycling businesses have closed). Work has a bin in which people just put random trash, so I have no great faith that gets recycled. A very rare store (none that local to me) have a bin and one natural area does and a few cities on the sidewalk (but I'm sure people are just dumping random junk). It gets to the point where one might drive all over town to recycle and ...
Our local grocery Loblaws chain has a 3-bins set up at the entrance. Plastic and paper recycling and waste. Walmart has a similar setup, I believe. Would that idea be a possibility?
Yes, I’ll check if Walmart or even Whole Foods has the bins. Both are near me.
Some of our local Safeways and Fred Meyer (Kroger), maybe others...have bins just inside their doors where you can recycle both plastic shopping bags and plastic wrap from items like TP, paper towels, etc.
Some of our local Safeways and Fred Meyer (Kroger), maybe others...have bins just inside their doors where you can recycle both plastic shopping bags and plastic wrap from items like TP, paper towels, etc.
I’ll look for those as well. Thanks!
Is recycling even a real thing these days?
I've seen all of these articles indicating that the recycling industry was sort-of a fraud, backed by China accepting boatloads of our junk, which they no longer are willing to do.
Our local recycling/transfer station, which the community owns, has certainly been having serious problems as a result of this structural change.
https://medium.com/@jonathanusa/everything-you-know-about-recycling-is-wrong-well-most-everything-f348b4ee00fe
Teacher Terry
12-27-19, 3:48pm
Sadly China was probably dumping it in the ocean.
Is recycling even a real thing these days?
I've seen all of these articles indicating that the recycling industry was sort-of a fraud, backed by China accepting boatloads of our junk, which they no longer are willing to do.
Our local recycling/transfer station, which the community owns, has certainly been having serious problems as a result of this structural change.
https://medium.com/@jonathanusa/everything-you-know-about-recycling-is-wrong-well-most-everything-f348b4ee00fe
Dang. Didn’t realize it was to that extent. So avoiding stuff if possible seems to be preferred. Except for plastic beverage bottles and metal cans.
Teacher Terry
12-27-19, 4:22pm
So much is hard to avoid. My allergy medication comes in a small bottle but they enclose it in cardboard and plastic so it’s too big to easily steal. I have been recycling for 35 years and had no clue it probably was for nothing.
There is a local brewery near me that takes glass. Aluminum and maybe steel cans have enough dollar value that at least around here there are few places that take them. One of them is a feed store that makes a little on the side recycling or maybe a junk yard. My friendly recycling center takes cardboard and other paper products as well, but discontinued taking all but #5 plastics. At this point my other plastics (besides plastic bags and wrappers) goes to the landfill.
Michigan has had a 10 cent deposit on bottles for ages. That really helps with the litter.
sweetana3
12-27-19, 6:32pm
One of our cat charities talked to several of the metal recyclers around our city and we can collect and donate and the amount given will go to them. Win, win.
Sad Eyed Lady
12-28-19, 10:35am
So discouraging for those of us who have faithfully recycled for years. My local recycling center takes cardboard/paper, aluminum and metal, but I have continued to save my #1 & #2 plastics and hauled them in my car to another county to drop off. Now I wonder how much of it is really being recycled. I think I will continue to recycle what my local area takes, and forget the plastic. Makes me cringe just to say it.
Teacher Terry
12-28-19, 2:58pm
I just opened the mail and had a letter from waste management. They wanted to assure people that they are recycling and not throwing it away. They don’t send anything overseas except for cardboard. They reminded people what’s acceptable.
happystuff
12-28-19, 6:10pm
I know it is an uphill battle, but - while I recycle as much as possible - I'm starting to look at the packaging and such on the items I buy. And, I'm also emailing and calling companies I believe are "over-doing it" on non-recyclable and to much packaging. I'm using my voice to try to change the packaging at the company source. Don't know if they are listening, but I don't mind the effort to try.
ToomuchStuff
12-29-19, 12:10am
One of our local trash companies, has a drop of depot for recyclables.
When we were in college, the school offered glass blowing. Periodically, we'd leave bags of glass bottles at the art studio, knowing they'd get recycled. Look for your local glass blower, the state artisans group, etc.
Newspapers, etc. are usually welcomed at your local animal shelter, pet shop, etc.
Single-use plastics: I recently found a bin at my co-op. Used grocery bags at least here can be recycled at the market.
Used clothes can either be made into rags, if torn or stained, or cut down and reshaped, if you're talented that way, or sold on a FB local seller's page or consigned. Also other housewares can be sold or consigned or donated.
Used tires and oil are usually recycled by garages. Ask your mechanic. Although our dump takes both.
Cooking fats are frequently recycled by restaurants and cafeterias. When I worked in a cafeteria, they were happy to let me add the odd cup or two of fats to the barrel, as it was sold by weight.
Find out what you can take to your local dump, would probably be where I'd start, then go on from there. At one point, we would save our metal and glass and drive it out to the local military posts dump. They accepted recycles from the "townies" but not our garbage.
Teacher Terry
12-29-19, 11:50am
My friend’s elderly mom had some cell phones that she was going to throw away because she couldn’t figure out where to recycle them after a few phone calls. I took them and googled it. I dropped them off on my way home. We also have a dump that’s free if you show your garbage bill. Mainly we just aren’t buying anything and donating what we don’t need. When I go to Poland I will buy a few new clothes because they are cheap, last forever and the styles are totally different. I did that 5 years ago and am still wearing the clothes.
SteveinMN
12-29-19, 12:39pm
Used grocery bags at least here can be recycled at the market..
Around here Goodwill is happy to see clean used plastic shopping bags. Maybe other thrift stores are, too. I periodically take the ones we end up with, despite our best efforts, and just walk them to a cashier. That's all you have to do, even if one is not a GW fan (I know some folks are not).
Used clothes
There are some kiosks in store parking lots near our house which accept used clothing; what they cannot resell as clothing is bundled, shredded, and sold as raw material for "green" house insulation. Denim is particularly coveted for this (not sure why).
Used tires and oil are usually recycled by garages. Ask your mechanic.
Garages do need to pay for their tires and oil to be recycled (though there's an edge case of shops and other people who can burn "waste oil" for heat), so I don't know as I'd get a set of tires shipped on-line and then ask the tech to recycle the old ones for me. OTOH if the tech is the one who mounts the new tires on wheels, maybe that's not so bad. My tech will swap/rotate tires twice a year for free if I buy the tires from him, which makes his price for the life of the tires cheaper than anything I can find elsewhere, even on-line. And solves the problem of disposal for me.
Find out what you can take to your local dump.
Our county prints (and mails to every single trash/recycling customer; way to improve that ol' green score >8) ) a booklet of what's accepted curbside and what is accepted at designated locations. Their Web site also lets you find places in town that accept hard-to-recycle items like carpet, compact fluorescent bulbs, etc.
catherine
12-29-19, 12:39pm
Find out what you can take to your local dump, would probably be where I'd start, then go on from there. At one point, we would save our metal and glass and drive it out to the local military posts dump. They accepted recycles from the "townies" but not our garbage.
I love our dump. Sounds so weird, but when we moved here, we debated whether we should have private trash pick up every other week, or take it once a week to the "transfer station" (i.e, dump). We opted for the latter. It's not far from our house, and it doesn't take long to round up the garbage, recyclables, brush, and bigger things like used tires and construction debris and take it there ourselves.
What that does is make you more mindful when you have carry and cart all the crap you used throughout the week. But I also like it because it's "one-stop dumping"--we swing around from station to station, from large bulk items, to brush, to garbage to recycling of glass, plastic and paper and then we're done.
Teacher Terry
12-29-19, 12:50pm
We only make one bag of garbage a week. However our recycling is one half to 3/4 full every 2 weeks.
I noticed that one of our local urban farmers was advertising for people to bring their old Christmas trees in to feed to their goats. They contract with the city in warmer months to use their goats for weed control in some of the open spaces. Boy, there's some roughage in Christmas trees.
SteveinMN
12-31-19, 1:05pm
Boy, there's some roughage in Christmas trees.
Also maybe tinsel and remnants of hangers. Wonder whose job it is to go through the trees and make sure they're clean?
Also maybe tinsel and remnants of hangers. Wonder whose job it is to go through the trees and make sure they're clean?
They were specific about removing tinsel and any other remnants of decoration. I think I can recall hearing of goats eating tin cans, so maybe a few remnants are not a big deal?
happystuff
12-31-19, 5:26pm
What that does is make you more mindful when you have carry and cart all the crap you used throughout the week.
This is an excellent point! I imagine there would be significant changes in products, packaging, recycling, etc. if people were more mindful and more personally responsible for disposal beyond hauling the can to the curb.
Nope, before we had garbage collection, garbage was simply thrown out of windows on country roads or down ravines. Mindfulness is going to take some education at the manufacturing level that recognizes the lack of motivation on the consumer's part.
Tradd: "I’ve called my town and they referred me to the town’s contracted trash hauler, who can’t help me since they don’t service my complex and don’t deal with individuals."
When I lived without a recycling program, I would drop off my recycling in the dumpster of a commercial office. Not particularly convenient but I got around the "we don't service individuals" issue. Maybe you can find out who they Do service and piggyback off them?
***
Cradle-to-cradle recycling is basically having a system that's actually set up to take just about everything that's lived its useful life, break it down as little as necessary and turn it back into useful products, over and over. Inorganic composting, if you will. It also can refer to things like returnable milk bottles that are reused an almost infinite number of times.
I see this as the answer to the garbage crisis, but it probably needs to happen in conjunction with a. more durable durable goods, and b. somewhat more local production - global warming seriously isn't served by shipping things constantly from one place to another, no matter how worthy the cause.
Do you think we could ever turn back time this much? What are our other alternatives?
What are our other alternatives?
I say we build a launch on an unused shuttle pad and shoot it into space. It should take us a while to pollute outer space. Or aim it at another planet--one with enough gravity to keep the crap in tow.
Maybe we could aim for a ring around the moon. That way it wouldn't be too much trouble to get it back when we run out of materials here.
I say we build a launch on an unused shuttle pad and shoot it into space. It should take us a while to pollute outer space.
Actually, it would appear mankind already is doing a good job at that... "How Much Junk Is In Space?" (https://www.space.com/8334-junk-space.html)
mschrisgo2
1-2-20, 10:48pm
We just got the year's schedule and guidelines from waste management. They have added several options this year: up to 3 gallons of oil- cooking or motor- can be picked up per week; a second "free" bulk waste pickup, 4x4x8, along with a suggestion to partner with neighbors to be sure its at maximum size (they want that truck to return full); option of recycling a large bag of clean aluminum cans per week, to be credited to one of several nonprofits. I'm especially pleased about this last item, as my church youth group has collected and recycled cans for many years and they were accepted into this program. No more dragging cans to church! The teens have already mounted a social media blitz to increase their take.
There is clarification about what goes in each barrel- garbage, recycling, green waste. A small area is piloting collection of food waste; it will be analyzed for content, composted, and available at $1/5 lb. bag, to residents of our county only, for garden use.
They have opened 4 new toxic waste collection sites, for a total of 8 now, and listed all of the things that should be taken there- including Round-up!- and emphasized "you don't have to get out of your vehicle, you get it to us, we will unload it for you."
The toxic waste stations also include a "store" to buy small amount of perfectly good products that were turned in. I've gotten wood stain, paint, lawn fertilizer, plastic conditioner. You can't beat $2 for a gallon of very light gray paint to use as an undercoat. The garden compost will also be sold there.
I have to say I am very impressed. I think a lot of thought went into the additions, and will be used and well-received. This is California, and a geographically large county, ranging from very rural to a very dense urban area. I see an effort made to recycle and reuse, as well as generally clean up, with clarity and education to support the efforts.
When I bought new tires it didn't even occur to me to think about where the old ones went. Costco didn't offer to give them back to me, and I didn't want them. I have no idea what colorado's 4 1/2 year ago policy on dead tire disposal was. It's entirely possible that they ended up in a landfill.
One of the things I like about living in San Francisco is that we have great trash pickup service. I'm curious whether our recycling is still as recycled as Recology's (our waste company) web site claims. But I'm more confident that the curbside compost collection is still being turned into compost that gets used by the grape farmers in the surrounding areas. All of our food waste, plus non-recyclable stuff like shredded paper and non-recyclable cardboard goes into the compost bin. And probably way more significantly, all the food waste from every restaurant in the city gets collected for compost. SO works at a large hotel that has six large compost bins of waste collected every day and that's just one commercial food prep place out of many in this city.
The other thing about California as a whole is that electronics are assessed a disposal surcharge at the time of purchase. Consequently they can be dropped off at the end of their lifecycle with a certified electronics recycle place and I have at least some level of trust that they will be disposed of in some sort of environmentally decent way.
mschrisgo2
1-2-20, 11:01pm
Great points, jp1. We are still spreading the word that every Best Buy Store is an electronics recycling collection site. So easy to drop stuff off as you replace it.
i am so pleased to hear that the hotels and restaurants got on board with the composting. I worked in the City briefly when that was first brought on board, and I remember that there was some resistance because it required changes in long-time procedures.
Really, it all boils down to the question- How will I get rid of this when I don’t want it any more?
mschrisgo2, that's so impressive. If you don't mind, what county is this? I'd love some ideas for advocacy.
Teacher Terry
1-3-20, 2:27pm
My friend tried to drop off old cell phones at Best Buy in Nevada and they wouldn’t take them.
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