Today is Earth Day, so recycling may be top of mind, although it’s arguably one of the most best-known ways to make a positive impact on the environment every day.
A quick primer on how recycling works in local jurisdictions: Our area conducts single-stream (also called comingled) recycling, meaning all recyclables go into one bin that you drag to the curb once a week. Trucks collect the contents and transport them to a Materials Recovery Facility, or MRF, where the items take a ride on a conveyor belt and get sorted by machines and human workers. Machines then compress the piles of paper, plastic, aluminum, glass and other materials and package them in bales for sale to companies that give them new life in another form.
The ability to turn trash into usable items again has been around for decades. In 1970 a college student created the iconic symbol (♻️) that now identifies recyclable materials. In 1988, the American Society of the Plastics Industry developed a numeric resin identification code—a number on the bottom of plastic containers to help recyclers identify and separate different types of plastics.
But that doesn’t mean people are any clearer on how recycling works and what can be recycled. In fact, 10% to 30% of recycling collected locally ends up in landfills because of improper practices.
“Recycling has been going on for decades now, and despite that, we’re still struggling with what can be recycled,” says Catie Torgersen, a sustainability analyst for the Solid Waste Management Program at Fairfax County’s Public Works and Environmental Services Department.
To sort out what goes in the curbside recycling bin, what to take to a recycling facility and what to trash, we spoke with experts in the waste management departments for Arlington County, Fairfax County and the City of Falls Church. Here’s what they had to say.
What Goes In Your Bin
Paper & Cardboard
Paper and cardboard are pretty straightforward recyclables. In fact, about three quarters of the total weight of recycled items in Arlington is fiber, often from paper-based products, says Adam Riedel, a principal environmental management specialist at the Arlington County Department of Environmental Services. Newsprint, cardboard, printer paper, construction paper, magazines and junk mail—including envelopes with plastic windows—can all go in your comingled bin.
The rules are slightly different in the City of Falls Church. Lonnie Marquetti, solid waste coordinator for Falls Church’s Department of Public Works, says that although magazines and other glossy papers are feasibly recyclable, the MRF the city uses does not currently accept that type of paper in comingled bins because there is no end market for buying those materials to recycle.
Pizza boxes are an exception to the cardboard-goes-in rule—sort of. “The majority of the time when you get a pizza, the bottom has oil, but sometimes the top is completely clean, so you can rip off the top and the top can be recycled,” Marquetti says. “The bottom part can actually go into into our composting program, or it can go into the trash.”
Wrapping paper is another yes-and-no material. If it’s metallic or has foil or glitter, trash it (or reuse it), but if it’s just paper, it can go into the recycling bin.
Plastics
Most plastics can be recycled, including hair and skincare product containers, drink bottles, laundry detergent jugs and takeout containers. Riedel says that several MRF operators in the region have reported noticing less plastic in the loads they are receiving. One reason for this, he says, could be because conscious consumers are moving away from purchasing products in plastic containers. (Research indicates that microplastic particles from plastic waste are harmful to humans, animals and the environment.)
You can’t just toss plastics into the bin, however. To make sure they get through the recycling process, rinse them out, let them dry and replace the lids. Although plastic lids are recyclable, loose ones can cause the sorting machines to jam.
“There’s no need to remove labels,” Riedel says. “Just make sure they’re clean, dry and empty.”
Metals
Aluminum cans that hold soda, food, pet food, shaving cream and hairspray or cooking sprays are recyclable, often including the plastic top. Those are considered “pure” items, meaning each part is constructed of a single type of material.
Clean tin foil can also go in your comingled bin. “As long as it hasn’t been cooked with or used to wrap a sandwich and there’s nothing on it, then yes, it can be recycled,” Marquetti says.
What to Trash
Mixed materials
Potato chip bags are not recyclable because they’re made of mixed materials, and it’s too labor-intensive and costly to separate them out. The same is true for Pringles cans, Marquetti says.
“A Pringles can, if you deconstructed it, has mixed fibers: it has aluminum, it has the plastic lid, it has aluminum on the bottom ring, so it’s made up of multiple different materials,” she says.
Candy wrappers also contain mixed materials and don’t belong in comingled bins, but TerraCycle, a private company, offers candy and snack wrapper recycling. Buy a bin, and when it’s full, send it back using a prepaid shipping label.
Other items that are a hard no for the recycling bin:
- Needles and medical waste
- Diapers
- Mixed packaging, such as singing birthday cards (without the singing part, recycle away)
- Blister packs
- Hangers
- Hoses
- Cables
- Styrofoam
- Ice cream containers, which contain materials to help insulate your dessert but could harm recycling machinery
- Plastic bags, including trash bags, which can jam the sorting machines. (Do not bag up your recyclables; throw them loose in the bin. See more on this below.)
In general, avoid putting anything in the recycling bin that’s very small, Togersen says. A good rule of thumb is, well, your hand. “Everything that you throw in your recycling bin should be larger than your hand,” she says. “The small things like pill bottles are too small” for the machines to process.
Items Requiring Extra Steps to Recycle
Coffee pods
Some things are recyclable, but they don’t belong in your comingled bin. Take the ubiquitous coffee pod, such as Keurig’s K-Cups or Nespresso capsules, for example.
“The plastic is a recyclable resin. The problem is its size,” Riedel says. “When it’s going through the MRF, there are slats in these [machines], and it will quite literally fall through the cracks and the machines just can’t recover something that small.”
It’s still possible to recycle those coffee pods, but, like candy wrappers, doing so requires an extra step. You can order a recycling bag for free from Nespresso, fill it with used pods and drop it off at any UPS location to be returned to the company for processing. Keurig sells a bin—mainly intended for office use, but usable anywhere—that works the same way.
(By the way, that takeout coffee cup? Not recyclable. Most are lined with polyethylene, which provides insulation and protects the cardboard from getting soaked, and separating that from the paper is often deemed not worth the effort. The plastic lid likely has the recycling symbol, but check its size against your hand before putting it in the bin.)
Pasta boxes and glass containers
You might notice that there are no “no” or “yes” signs on the photo above. That’s because the items’ recycling status is complicated. The pasta box is cardboard (which is recyclable), but you need to first remove the plastic window before putting it in the bin.
The glass jar is also recyclable—just not in your bin. Several years ago, area recycling centers stopped accepting glass in the comingled containers.
“It would shatter and get all over the materials, contaminating them,” Torgersen says. Plus, the shards damaged machinery and put worker safety at risk. Additionally, glass is heavy and added to transportation costs. “They found it was a lot more profitable to separate it out, so that you had clean stream of just glass, and that that was easier to sell at the end market.”
Although it can’t go in that curbside bin, glass is still accepted at any of the 40-plus glass recovery drop-off stations—look for purple receptacles—throughout Northern Virginia. Fairfax County, which has recycled more than 40 million pounds of glass in the past five years, finds that more glass gets recycled as a result of the change, which it made in 2019. One reason may be that because the glass is separated out, there is less contamination and more can be processed. Arlington has five drop-off sites for glass recycling.
Bonus: You can leave lids and labels on glass jars; they can go in the same glass recovery bins.
Plastic bags
It’s bad to bag up recyclables such as cans and bottles, but recycling bags by themselves is good. Most grocery stores, Target locations and other retailers offer plastic bag recycling through private programs. For instance, the Trex Company, based in Winchester, partners with retailers nationwide to give plastic bags new life: It grinds up the plastic film and combines it with sawdust swept up from sawmills to engineer synthetic wood that’s sold as decking and park or playground benches.
Rechargeable batteries
Rechargeable batteries are recyclable, but you must drop them off at specified facilities, such as Arlington’s Household Hazardous Materials collection facilities or even some fire stations.
“Those batteries, when they’re compacted, are incredibly fire-prone,” Riedel says. “About half of the fires in MRFs and in collection vehicles are sparked by rechargeable batteries, lithium ion batteries, nickel ion that end up in those systems. And they’re very hard to put out. Most MRFs are experiencing, depending on their size, one to three fires a week. They have pretty sophisticated fire-suppression systems, but obviously, some get out of control. About 1% of all MRFs in the country each year have a fire that puts them out of service for some period of time.”
E-waste
Don’t waste too much time wondering what to do with old computers, tablets, televisions, remote controls, DVD players, computer mice and other electronics. Fortunately they’re recyclable, but, again, you’ll have to drive them to centers that accept them.
It’s worth noting that Virginia law requires any manufacturer that sells more than 500 units of computer equipment in the state to offer customers a way to return or recycle their purchase at no cost.
If that option doesn’t apply to you, you can take your electronic waste (a.k.a. “e-waste”) to the Household Hazardous Materials/Electronics Collection Recycling Center in Arlington, the I-66 Transfer Station and I-95 Landfill Complex in Fairfax, and at eAsset Solutions (427 N. Maple Ave., Falls Church), a Little City partner.
“People shouldn’t think too hard about it. If it’s an electronic, they put it in there,” says Riedel, referring to the collection sites.
Food scraps
In Arlington, residents can request a green curbside recycling cart to collect food scraps in compostable bags. Put them in that cart with yard waste for weekly curbside collection. The county also gives all residents a small compost caddy to collect food scraps in the kitchen.
To compost in McLean, bring your food scraps to either of Fairfax County’s two recycling facilities or any of 10 county-run farmers markets.
Falls Church offers the community a place to drop off food scraps 24 hours a day. Bring compostable items to specially marked bins located behind the City Hall and Community Center parking lot (300 Park Ave., Falls Church).
Common Mistakes & How to Avoid Them
Bagging recyclables
The biggest mistake that people make with their recycling is putting the items in a trash bag, all three experts say.
“The plastic bags get tangled in the machinery and can cause a big safety and efficiency concern for the facility because it can shut it down,” Fairfax’s Torgersen says. “But [also] the workers…don’t know what’s in the bag. It could be something hazardous and so they treat that as trash. So, entire bags of potential recyclables end up in the landfill.”
Contamination
Contamination causes many recyclables to miss their mark. That could be as simple as not cleaning out a takeout container or Nutella jar before tossing it in the bin. It takes some effort, but don’t put too much elbow grease into getting out every drop.
“No need to go in the dishwasher; we get that question” about cleaning recyclables, Riedel says. “If you have a peanut butter jar, you can just wipe it with a paper towel and that’s going to be clean enough.”
Wishcycling
Another common problem is “wishcycling,” which happens when people put things in the recycling bin hoping they get recycled. “They think, ‘Oh, if I put it in, magically someone will recycle it,’” Riedel says. He’s seen garden hoses, car bumpers and even a mechanical saw show up at recycling centers. “All that stuff, it’s just not recycled, so it’s going to end up in the trash.”
Not only are recyclables typically clearly marked, they often include specific instructions on how to recycle them. Below are some examples, from a drink container (top left) and three types of plastic bags.
Ultimately, recycling involves a certain level of subjectivity. Local officials urge consumers not to feel guilty about opting to trash something over recycling it. “The phrase we use is, When in doubt, throw it out,” Riedel says. “We would rather not capture something that someone thought could have been recycled and get contaminated items. It gums up the process, and it makes it harder to recover the other materials.”
“Recycling does take work. It’s not hard, but it does take work,” Marquetti adds. “For a good portion of everything you have in your home, there is a proper way to dispose of it if you take the time and reach out to your locality.”
For more help on how to recycle where you live, check out these resources:
- Arlington County’s pamphlet on what’s recyclable.
- Fairfax County’s “What Goes Where” tool and this guide.
- The City of Falls Church’s guidelines.