My SO drinks more Mountain Dew than a nest of Neckbeards, and while he would not think twice about just tossing all the depleted cans into the garbage, it gives me a lot of anxiety.

I rinse the cans and set them aside to be taken to a local park for recycling. I put the rinsed cans back into the boxes they came in (12 pack and 24-cube pack) and recycle them altogether, which a fellow recycler told me was fine when he saw me actually taking the cans out to put them in loose.

I know single-stream recycling (these recycling dumpsters are not sorted) sorts through the material at a facility, and aluminum cans are melded together so my question is:

Are the boxes a hindrance to this process? Would it be better to put the cans in loose? Putting them in the boxes just makes transporting them easier, but I want to make sure the cans are accepted without issue.

I am in Columbus, Ohio if this makes a difference.

I live any nyc and I'm been trying to get better recycling so I have a question anyone know if things like the preserve spoons, forks are cureside recycling or no?

I had to change my diet but sadly this is just adding to me slowly trying to go zero waste. I have to eat yogurt and cearl and the issue with cereal and yogurt are the cups and bags. Anyone who knows recycling programs that would take them ?

I have two rechargeable (presumably on Li-ion batteries) electric grinders I no longer need. Looking at the recycling options around me doesn't give me much hope. Tried connecting with Best Buy and Home Depot and both said no. Tried searching for a recycling option on Earth911 and "electric pepper grinder" didn't have any match.

Is there a proper electronic category they fall in? Has anyone successfully recycled them at other places? I've come to realizing it's not possible to find an exact match. Kind of at my wit's end and tired of trying to protect the environment only to spend hours to getting anywhere. Thanks in advance.

Earth 911
https://search.earth911.com/?what=electric+pepper+grinder&where=zip+code&list_filter=all&max_distance=25&family_id=&latitude=&longitude=&country=&province=&city=&sponsor=

Best Buy

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/services/recycling/pcmcat149900050025.c?id%3Dpcmcat149900050025

Home Depot

https://www.homedepot.com/c/electronics_recycling_programs

Hi all, I'm cleaning out some old clothes out of my place and I'm really struggling on what to do now. These clothes are very worn down and full of holes, so not good enough to donate but I feel weird just throwing them away. My issue is I have no idea where I can take them. The "closest" textile recycling center is a 3 hour drive and H&M came under some massive fire over their recycling program a while back so I'm not sure that would be a wise choice. Are there any good alternatives? Or has anyone used an online service and had a good experience? I appreciate any help!

Just wondering if I’m getting old lol. Is it a bad idea to reuse garbage bags. Or is the environment to far gone to care?

I am conducting a microbio research project and would love some insight on just how many people choose to compost and who have not. If you do compost I would appreciate sharing how you started and how you have benefited from doing so.

View Poll

For items that need to be rinsed before recycling, such as soup cans, soda cans, etc. do you ever feel like the water you're using to rinse cancels out the good you're trying to do? Like, does the benefit of recycling aluminum outweigh the water waste? Or do you just not recycle those items?

Your thoughts please!

Title says it all.

I know it's not the biggest plan in the world, but I would love to be able to do something and have a demonstrable end product. I learned how to repurpose single-use bags into "plarn" a couple weeks back, and saw a video of a very small setup for turning PET into polyesters for yarn as well.

Biggest questions:

1. overall costs for start-up?

-- The big ones from what I saw would be the initial processing: something to shred the flattened bottles (would a decent paper shredder work at first?); for fibers work, the chopper to make it finer, and; (at leaast in what I saw), a cotton candy spinner for the polyfill kind of raw fibers to spin.

2. How many components for the aspects are 3-D printable?

-- I did see that a filament gadget was open-source-- one that will pull the bottle to ribbon, heat it, and pull it to reels (not unlike weed whacker trim line).

3. OSHA-lite: what safeguards would I need to have in place?

-- I think the microplastics bit from making the confetti and then the fibers would be the hardest one; no need to go making a problem worse just for getting yarn out of the deal. The smell of some of the melts too is something I'd want to account for.

I'm literally at square one and would like to go from there.

Anything and everything welcome!

i don't think i ever come across anyone complaining about this online.

My HOA doesn't allow greasy items to be recycled, but I can't find anything about it on the website of the city since it's a city program that collects waste.

Every once in a while someone goes around with a clipboard and opens up trash and recycling bins super early in the morning on trash pickup days (and as someone who has done this gig in another state its typically to make sure people are actually recycling things) and I recently got a warning about putting greasy boxes in the blue bin.

Is this normal? I hate to put cardboard in the trash, especially since the majority of chain pizza places mention recycling the box on the box itself 🫠

Came via online delivery. I have a dozen of these. Normally it’s just plain brown paper bags, but I guess as it heats up here in Philly they are messing with success?

About 10% of these blades are plastic. We have a local recycling company that pays people for recycling their metal. I'm wondering if I could just stick these into a can or something else and have them recycled that way?

Most are printed with thermal paper or however it’s called but I think there are some that are recyclable? And if yes, how can you tell?

There are a lot of companies now repurposing plastic bags etc for the production of durable plastic construction material (wood alternatives). Does anyone know about the production of microplastics during normal weathering of these materials? I live in a place with a good amount of rain snow and ice and I’m curious if I made a porch with these if I’d be putting a ton of microplastics out there over its lifetime.

Hello! I am looking to start a recycling project that uses cork. The ideal senario is to reuse wine corks, but I want to grind up the cork into small little pieces to make shapes with it. Anyone knows how to bind the small pieces together to create shapes?

Just a bit confused by the infos on the packaging, but it looks like plastic #7...