Refuse and recycling carts at the curb
Streets & Urban Forestry

Recycling Guidelines

Green recycling cart

On this page you will find:

Drawing of what a full recycling cart with good recyclables could look like, full of plastic bottles, paper, and so on.

Recycling Guidelines

  • Only put the correct paper, plastic containers, metal, and glass in the recycling cart.
  • Recyclables must be clean, empty, and dry.
  • Do not bag your recyclable items. Put items loose in the recycling cart.
    • If you must use a bag, use a clear bag. If sorters cannot see what is inside the bag, they will assume it is trash.
    • Exception: Shredded paper should always be in a clear bag.
  • Keep the recycling cart lid closed when out for collection.
  • Do not put any banned items in the recycling cart.

What Belongs In Your Recycling Cart

Recyclables should be clean, empty, and dry.

  • Plastic bottles, jugs, dairy tubs, and similar plastic containers
  • Flattened cardboard boxes (including pizza boxes)
  • Junk mail
  • Newspaper, office paper, packing paper, etc.
  • Magazines
  • Cartons (milk, juice, soy milk, chicken broth, etc.)
  • Paper cups
  • Glass bottles
  • Glass jars
  • Aluminum, steel, and tin cans
  • And many other items...
  • Photo of mixed recyclables. Plastic bottles, flattened cardboard, metal cans, glass bottles, and other good recyclables.

    Overview of the kind of materials okay for the recycling cart. 

  • Plastic containers that are okay for the recycling cart

    Examples of the plastic containers okay for the recycling cart.

  • Paper products that are okay for the recycling - flattened cardboard, newspaper, cartons, and other items.

    Examples of the kind of paper products okay for the recycling. One note: the fish sticks and cereal boxes should have been flattened.

  • Metal items okay for the recycling cart, including cans, balled up aluminum foil, and a clean & empty saucepan

    Examples of metal items okay for the recycling cart - cans, balled up aluminum foil, etc.

  • Examples of okay glass items for the recycling cart - bottles and jars. That's it.

    Examples of glass okay for the recycling - yes, it's only bottles and jars. 

Items Banned from the Recycling Cart

Look for a cart card to see if the recycling cart at your home was not collected for having inappropriate items. 

Recycling right matters. Carts with banned items will not be picked up.

Banned Items List

Unsure about your item?  Look it up in the Recyclopedia.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens to the recyclables after pickup?

The City of Madison hauls them to Pellitteri Waste Systems on the east side Madison where they are sorted and eventually sold to make new products.

The plastic containers are made into carpeting, drain tiles, paint cans, other items.

The paper is made into new paper products. Cardboard gets turned back into the wavy bits of cardboard boxes that you see.

And metal and glass containers are made into new metal and glass products.

They have an excellent video that shows how that sorting process works. 

It's a lot of people and machines doing a lot of hard work.  And if you have a group that is interested, Pellitteri does offer tours of the facility. 

What do I do if I have more recyclables than what fits in my cart?

We have a set of rules special for these one-off circumstances on our Clean Out page.

If this happens a lot at your home, you can:

  • Get a bigger cart
  • Buy an extra cart
  • Use the drop-off sites
  • Change what you buy to make less waste

If you are a business that uses our recycling service, you must have the number of carts you need to hold the recyclables you generate. This includes cardboard.

What do I do if I have too much cardboard?

We have a special webpage just for this situation.

How clean do my recyclables need to be?

Make an honest effort.  Do your best.  Do not leave any obvious food chunks or pieces of debris behind in the container.  It does not have to be spotless perfect like the container just rolled off the production line.

If you hold up the container and can say, "Hey, there's [insert thing that shouldn't be there] still in here" then you should try again.  

If you see a couple flecks of something around the rim, or maybe the bottle is a little cloudy because it's not quite perfectly clean, but it's empty and dry - then you have done your best.

Why can I only put glass jars and glass bottles in the recycling? Why not other glass things?

Bottles & jars melt at different temperatures than other types of glass.  

And you can't separate the other types of glass out from bottles & jar glass once it's all mixed together.  

Here's a long video about glass bottle making from a bottle manufacturer if you're interested to learn more about the process.

Why does size matter with recycling?

It has to do with how the sorting equipment works.  

Anything smaller than about the size of a standard sticky note will into the glass sorting area.  

And then the company that processes the glass has to clean it all of the little bits of non-glass junk out, and it raises costs.  

Also, you can't put anything too large into the recycling cart because of how the material is sorted. 

Unfortunately, we see plenty of plastic buckets and other big chunky things in the recycling and that's not the right choice. 

Why do I have to keep the cart lid closed?

When you leave your cart lids open, it leaves the material inside exposed to rain and snow.

This can ruin paper products.

Please keep the lids on your cart closed.

And if you have more recyclables that can fit into the cart every week, contact us to see about getting a larger cart.

If it's plastic, can I recycle it?

The only kind of plastic we can accept are the specific kind of plastic containers listed on this page.

Think milk jugs, pop bottles, detergent bottles, deli containers, and stuff like that. 

Our world contains a lot plastic stuff. It's literally everywhere. Frisbees, acrylic nails, bicycle helmets, polyester clothes, shower curtains, and on and on and on...

We can only take those very specific plastic containers in the cart - all of that other plastic stuff out there, we can't. 

If you want to cut down on the amount, of plastics you make - great idea.

We have some idea on general waste reduction you might find useful.

And if you're unsure if you can recycle it, look it up in the online Recyclopedia.

 

Recyclopedia

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