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New Yorkers send a literal mountain of stuff — over 600,000 tons of material — to be recycled through curbside recycling every year.
But that’s just about 17.5% of our total waste stream every year, and about half of what we could be doing.
If New Yorkers recycled paper, glass, plastic and metal to their maximum potential, about a third of what ends up in the city’s trash would be saved from landfills, according to the Department of Sanitation.
Cynicism about how much good recycling does plays a part, but even well-intentioned recyclers make mistakes, or think things are trash when they can be reused.
Joshua Goodman, DSNY spokesperson, said it’s better to toss things in the recycling than be sorry.
“The only time that you know for sure your stuff is not getting recycled is when you put it in the trash. So if you’re concerned about that, put it in the recycling and let us do our best,” he said.
And as you sort your trash, keep in mind that the old mantra — reduce, reuse, recycle — is still true, in that order: reduce consumption as much as you can, reuse things when possible and recycle the rest.
So, how can you be a better recycler? It’s not always easy to know. THE CITY’s readers have asked us a lot of questions about it, and we took those queries to waste experts to bust the myths, reveal commonly missorted items and make recycling day easier in New York.
Here are our answers in Part One of our guide to recycling in the city. Stay tuned for Part Two later this week:
Well, we can tell you that New York City’s recycling system does divert tons and tons of stuff from landfills every day to be turned into new products and materials.
Is the system perfect? No. But many things are recyclable — and valuable — to people who make products out of recycled stuff. Some materials, like paper and metal, are easier to use to make other goods. Others, like certain types of plastics and glass, are tough to resell and ultimately end up in landfills if there’s no market for them.
We visited New York City’s recycling facilities to get a closer look at how this happens. For more on the mechanics of where your recycling goes when the truck picks it up, how it’s processed, who carts it away and how it’s turned into something else, stay tuned for Part Two of our recycling guide to publish later this week.
Here are the basics: Separate paper from plastic, metal and glass. You can place each group of items into a bag. Depending on your building, some supers just let residents toss items into bins and take care of the bagging themselves. Pro tip: It’s helpful to whoever is handling your paper recycling to break down cardboard first!
Despite trash containerization going into effect for many city buildings, recycling is not included in those new rules. Recycling can still be put into clear, plastic bags and left at the curbside. You are allowed to put it in a bin, but there are regulations about what type of container you can use, which you can read more about here.
No — don’t stress. You don’t have to be a perfect recycler to do it, and if you’re not sure recycle it!
The companies DSNY hires to handle our recycling are very good at sorting stuff and figuring out which things go where: paper vs. plastic, metal and glass vs. regular trash vs. organics.
“Make your best guess,” said Goodman of the DSNY. “Let us handle the sorting.”
The one thing to keep in mind: If you think it might be recyclable, don’t chuck it in the garbage where it will have no chance of being recycled.
“If you’re not sure, let us take care of it. We are the experts. If you put it in the trash, it definitely doesn’t get recycled,” he said.
There are three big culprits: Milk cartons, gadgets with rechargeable batteries and vape pens.
Any carton with plastic lining — used for packaging many types of soy or nut milk, soup stock or juice — may feel like paper, but it goes in with the metals, plastics and glass. People often throw them in with the paper, said Goodman, but those cartons belong in the other stream.
Many rechargeable, lithium-ion batteries also end up in the recycling when they should be handled as hazardous waste (more on that below) because they are a fire risk. Lots of household items now have these types of batteries, including smoke detectors, phone headsets and power tools, to name a few. Even some kinds of musical greeting cards have batteries that should not end up in the trash or recycling.
Vape pens are a whole other challenge because they have a heating element, and also vape juice, which the EPA classifies as a hazardous material. That makes them “very complicated” to dispose, Goodman said, and they definitely should not end up in the recycling or trash. Treat them as hazardous waste instead.
Tossing batteries into the recycling streams or regular trash results in fires. Balcones Material Recovery Facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn — which sorts the glass, plastic and metal stream — sees one to three battery fires on a daily basis, and the paper mill has frequent fires, too. Dispose of your items with lithium-ion batteries safely by taking them to a hardware, electronics or office supply store (find one here), or to a special waste site — there’s one in each borough.
You can also drop off hazardous waste — including nail polish, fire extinguishers, along with those pesky vape pens — at those special waste sites, or at the SAFE Disposal events DSNY hosts. (But, unlike goods with lithium-ion batteries, those hazardous items aren’t accepted at hardware, electronics or office supply stores.)
You should recycle any type of paper you can think of, experts say, other than those plastic-lined cartons. That’s because all of it — newspaper, tissue paper, notebook paper, wrapping paper, books, receipts, magazines, cardboard boxes, egg cartons — ends up in a big paper pulp soup at a mill on Staten Island that is turned into all kinds of other paper materials.
Pratt Industries, which runs the mill where New York City’s paper recycling ends up, wants it all.
“Give me every single piece of paper, no matter what type of paper,” said Muneer Ahmad, Pratt’s general manager.
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Here are some of the most common products our newsroom received paper recycling-related questions about:
Coffee cups and paper takeout containers?
Take the plastic lids and toss those into the recycling bin for metal, plastic and glass, but throw the cup into the paper recycling bin. Same for the brown paper take-out boxes. Since they’re usually coated with wax or plastic to make them waterproof, Pratt can’t pulp all the material but can use some of it, Ahmad said.
Mailer envelopes with plastic liners?
Yes, those, too. Pratt will take out the liner and metal pieces and use the paper.
You can either throw pizza boxes in with organics or paper recycling. Yes, even if it’s greasy or cheesy. Pratt cleans the material. Take out the crusts or leftover slices before it goes into the recycling bin.
“What I do at home is think ‘Am I OK with this sitting in the recycling bin for a week? If it’s a low enough amount of food residue that that’s fine, then it’s fine [for recycling],” said Goodman.
What about wood, like a cutting board or chopsticks?
Paper is made of wood, but pieces of solid wood should not go into the recycling bin, no matter how small. Compost them instead!
Recycle anything made of glass, or metal, plus any rigid plastic.
Here’s a good rule of thumb: “If you put it on the counter and it maintains its shape, then it’s rigid plastic,” said Kara Napolitano, education and outreach manager at Balcones.
Here are more plastic, metal and glass items we checked with DSNY that are OK to be recycled in this category:
Bear in mind: Some glass types are recyclable — pasta sauce jars, wine bottles — and some (like many candle holders) are not, but Goodman said there’s often no way for a layman to know how to distinguish those. He recommends putting all those items into the recycling, and the facility will take care of it. (Better that some of your glass gets recycled than none of it!)
However, do not recycle eyeglasses, mirrors or lightbulbs.
Heads up: Floppy and filmy plastic bags, bubble wrap or cellophane do not go into this bin.
You can take plastic bags and film plastic — the kind used for bagging newspapers, ice, dry cleaning, and much more — to large retailers and chain stores with at least five locations in the five boroughs to be recycled. This type of plastic is hard to recycle and often has fewer reuses; more about that in Part Two of this series publishing later this week.
Nope — within the five boroughs of New York, ignore those! The numbers, printed inside the famous chasing triangle recycling symbol on various products, don’t indicate how recyclable something is. In New York City, our recycling system takes every type of plastic.
It is true that not all of those plastic materials can be recycled, however. But the approach New York City takes is to accept everything in the hopes of receiving a higher volume of what can actually be recycled.
For example, #1 and #2 are highly recyclable type of plastic, while #3 is typically less reusable and therefore can be less valuable on the resale market. That’s why some other cities may not accept certain plastics.
“Even if New York City accepts it in the bin, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to find a home to be turned into another item,” said Jennie Romer, author of the book “Can I Recycle This?” and a sustainability consultant. “New York City accepts all rigid plastic. They do that knowing that there isn’t a market for every type of plastic, but they see it as a way to get the most potentially recyclable material into the bin that they can then sort out.”
It’s a myth that food residue ruins a bin of recycling. That said, try to rinse off your recyclable items, but no need to use too much water or put too much elbow grease into it. As long as you’re not tossing in a full carton of milk or a jar filled halfway with peanut butter, it’s probably fine.
And no worries if there’s food waste on metal objects. When the metal goes through the recycling process, it gets smelted, which means heated up to extract the valuable parts. That burns off the organic waste, too.
If you have a spiral bound notebook with both paper and metal, or a tube of oats with a paper middle, metal at the bottom and a plastic top, choose your fighter — put it in either bin.
You can also rip it apart and recycle each component separately, but you don’t have to. The important thing is not to trash it.
Metal bottle caps are fine to throw into the recycling by themselves, or you can keep them on the bottles. Plastic caps should be kept on plastic bottles or containers, but don’t stress if you forget and toss them in separately.
The priority here is to think of worker safety. Your super or a sanitation worker shouldn’t have to risk getting cut, so it’s a good idea to double-bag the items and trash them. Don’t put knives or weapons into the recycling, either.
Cables, string lights, hoses and extension cords can get tangled and muck up the machinery that sorts the recycling. Trash those.
The electronic gadgets themselves (laptops, phones, computer mice or televisions, for instance) should go with e-waste, not recycling or regular garbage.
DSNY may fine property owners if they fail to separate recyclable material, and the fines vary based on the size of the building. If you see a building not properly recycling, you can report it to 311 to spur a DSNY investigation.
You can take textiles that can’t be reused or donated to collection sites across the five boroughs.
Some commonly nonrecyclable items in New York include Styrofoams, fake Christmas trees, disposable gloves and face masks and ceramics. If you can’t give ceramic dishes or other objects away or use them for crafts (mosaics, anyone?), then into the trash they go. If you need to ask: Please, don’t recycle bowling balls!
“We don’t know where they are all coming from. We see a ridiculous amount,” Napolitano said. “They’re not recyclable, and they get stuck in weird places.”
If you have another object or type of material we didn’t cover here, you can peruse DSNY’s extensive recycling resources, or write to our newsroom at ask@thecity.nyc.
Where does recycling go when you toss it? And how much of the material really gets used? Read all about that in Part Two of our recycling series, publishing later this week. Have more questions? Email ask@thecity.nyc.
Rachel Holliday Smith contributed reporting.
Samantha is a senior reporter for THE CITY, where she covers climate, resiliency, housing and development. More by Samantha Maldonado
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