Day 8: Curbside Recycling and Composting Rules

1. When in doubt, throw it out (or give Eco-Cycle a shout)! “Wishcycling” only contaminates the stream and potentially causes problems for equipment/human sorters. Denver folks, use THIS search engine!
2. The recycling symbol is unregulated and doesn’t mean the item is recyclable. Check your local guidelines rather than depending on the symbol to tell you whether you can recycle something in your home recycling bin or not.
3. Keep plastic bags OUT of the regular recycling! Stretchy #4 bags can be collected and recycled at places like the CHaRM and many grocery stores (like Nude Foods Market), but in the regular recycling stream they jam up the machinery and are costly and dangerous to remove.
4. The numbers on plastic packaging also don’t directly indicate recyclability. In Boulder County, stick to bottles, tubs, jugs, jars, tub lids, clamshells and hard to-go containers when it comes to plastics.
5. When recycling plastic bottles/jugs, attach the plastic caps. If they are separate, they are too small to be recycled and clog up machinery. (The rule of thumb is that if something is smaller than 2 inches, it should go to landfill.)
6. Tetrapak cartons can be recycled. Squish but do not flatten, and attach the plastic cap. Tetrapak are one of the few packaging producers who take responsbility for their packaging and they take the entire thing.

Boulderites, check out the full EcoCycle Recycling guidelines.

Denver folks, check out what’s accepted here.

Composting

1. If you have curbside composting, remember that you can put items such as bones and meat in your bin. These things wouldn’t be good in your backyard pile, but in the commercial facility it is hot enough to break all of that down.
2. Contamination matters! There are no mechanisms to remove items that should not be composted. If you put fruit stickers in the compost, they will likely end up as microplastics in our soils/new food. Keep plastic OUT!

Check out the full EcoCycle Composting guidelines.

In Denver, Compost is slowly being rolled out municipally. If you are not covered by the city, here are some options to check out:

–Wompost: Women-owned composting!
-Cherry Creek Recycling and Compost: Free food scrap (and recycling) drop-off for Denver residents.
–Compost Colorado: Curbside food scrap and organics collection in the greater Denver area.
–Denver Compost Collective: Food scrap curbside collection service geared toward apartment-dwellers. They donate their finished compost to a local community farm, Frontline Farming.
–Scraps: Residential and commercial food scrap collection plus a drop-off location.
–SustainAbility: Residential organics collection.

Challenge 8:

Download EcoCycle’s A-Z Recycling Guide App, take a screenshot and share it on the Facebook page (or just tell us you’ve done it if taking a screenshot is a pain!)

On Android.

On Apple.