Recycling Those Tricky Household Items

We’ve all had to deal with that large collection of awkward items that you aren’t sure how to properly get rid of. It can be hard to dispose of these items properly, even if it is important to you. With all of the different types of materials, sometimes it’s overwhelming. If the world were perfect then you could throw the items into a magical box and it’d disappear. The reality is that some items aren’t as simple to get rid of as a box of newspapers or an empty soda bottle. This guide will help you find a way to safely dispose of these items and keep your community clean. You’ll learn not only about the differences between each item, but why they may or may not need to be recycled in different ways. It’s important to keep an open mind, because some of the items listed contain harmful chemicals that not only could harm the environment, but also you and your family as well.

Can You Recycle Furniture?

It can be difficult to know how to dispose of furniture, and not simply because it’s large and heavy. A quick solution is to check government websites and see what they say with regards to your particular state and community. Some states use different laws to regulate such activities. It’s extremely important that you double check that what you want to do is legal within your state. You have more options for furniture than simply throwing it away though.

You can try to donate your furniture. Donating is an excellent option. After all, if a chair or a couch is in great condition, it’d be somewhat of a shame to let that go to waste. No matter where you live, there are always donation centers that are not only happy to take your old sofa, but they’ll often do it free of charge. Even better, many donations are often tax deductible as well, making it at least somewhat profitable in the long run. If there aren’t any donation centers near you, you can always check with nearby churches to see if they have a donation program. Another idea is to call local community services, like soup kitchens, homeless shelters and animal shelters, to see if they have any use for such an item. Donating is an excellent way to both help your community, and rid yourself of unwanted furniture.

There are services you can call which will come retrieve the furniture as well. You may find that you don’t have any help from friends or family, or that you don’t have a way to move the furniture yourself. These situations are all too common, so there are a plethora of services you can call to come retrieve the furniture. While you may need to do a little research, there are plenty of services, including non-profit charities, that you can choose from. If you don’t have that sort of service near you, sometimes it’s just as simple as calling your local waste management facility for them to come dispose of it. Often you’ll be charged for this, however you can rest assured knowing that it will be properly and professionally taken care of.

What to do with Old Bathtubs?

Bathtubs are an entirely different procedure altogether. With bathtubs it’s not as simple as throwing them away in the dumpster, as a good percentage of them are made of acrylic, which is not a very biodegradable material, meaning that they’ll sit in landfills far longer than most other items. While you should be able to dispose of bathtubs in a similar fashion to furniture (always double check your local government websites for information) you might also find that you can repurpose them instead.

You may realize that the tub, with a little decoration and polish, makes for an excellent place to start a garden at home. There are numerous tutorials online on how to convert your old bathtub into something new and fresh. You’ll find the tub garden has less weeds, much lower maintenance, and can look quite fetching in your yard, so it’s difficult to find a fault in this plan.

Washing your beloved pet can be a hassle in and of itself, so why not consider dedicating a part of your backyard as a pet washing station? Instead of filling your home with the mud and filth that comes off of your excited, playful, and dirty pup, you might want to wash the dog outside. You can also use this for those days when your young child decides to make mud pies outside.

How to Properly Dispose of Cleaning Products

Cleaning products can do amazing things, but they’re a problem when it’s time to dispose of them. If it’s not safe for consumption, then it stands to reason that it’s probably not great for the environment as well. After all, they’re literal bottles of chemicals that aren’t exactly found in the wild. So before just dumping them down the drain and potentially into our drinking water, here’s a definitive list of all the chemicals and how to get rid of them not just properly, but safely as well.

Laundry products, such as bleach, detergents, pre-soaks and water softeners are all safe to put down the drain. While most fabric softeners should be fine you should always check the back of the bottle, as they may have chemicals in them that aren’t water soluble.

While most dish cleaning products are able to dissolve in water, there are some that aren’t actually eco-friendly, so you’ll need to read the back of the bottle and look for any special disposal instruction.

Due to the nature of household cleaners and how many there are there is no straightforward answer that can be given; even the bottles don’t always tell you what you need to do. You’ll likely have to look the item up online and read the information that is often posted on things like forums. In the meantime, there are a couple good rule of thumbs to keep you on the right track. Solids should be thrown away, never recycled, and liquids will normally be alright to go down the drain. Afterward, be sure that the containers are thoroughly rinsed before you place them in the recycling.

How do I Dispose of Old Appliances?

Appliances have some strict regulations and rules on them, but you can view them as one of two things.

Refrigerators have to be recycled, you cannot simply throw them away. Fridges contain chlorofluorocarbons (or CFCs), which are a part of the Clean Air Act. You’ll prevent CFC from invading the atmosphere any more than it already has by recycling your refrigerator. Any large appliance which relies on a chemical, like heat pumps or AC units, will fall under this category, so you should contact your local waste management facility about having these things properly and safely removed.

The remainder of appliances, smaller ones like toasters or microwaves, have their own methods of disposal. They may not have CFCs in them, however they are electronics, so you still have to take care when disposing of them. Many states had e-waste programs that you can reach out to where they will either repair and reuse the product, or properly dispose of it. Some of these places will do this for free, so it’s a good idea to look into what’s offered.

Can You Recycle Old Mattresses?

Mattresses are actually more of a problem to deal with than furniture is. Due to the high risk of spreading illness and infection there are many laws in place about repurposing and reselling them. The CDC doesn’t mince words when it talks about the dangers of reselling mattresses. Yet, every year around 40 million mattresses fill our landfills, and each mattress takes up an average of 40 cubic feet. Throwing them away may in fact by a long term money drain, as they are clunky, large, and have been known to damage landfill equipment. So how do we solve this problem?

Over the years a few organizations have been formed that will take a mattress apart, reuse all materials they can, and incinerate the ones they can’t. This is much cheaper and more space efficient than simply dumping them. Unfortunately these organizations haven’t become commonplace yet, so if one isn’t near you then you’ll have to call your local waste management office to receive further advice on what to do.

What to do with Old Rugs?

Carpets and rugs are really easy to recycle. Most massed produced carpets are made with biodegradable materials for quick break down, and most states allow them to be a part of curbside pick up. The fibers in them can be used to make new rugs and carpets, and they are easily broken down by a plastic resin which can be used for the mass production of other products. Most even accept carpet padding, and don’t require you to separate them upon disposal.

You should never donate a carpet or rug. Your heart may be in the right place, but just like mattresses the concern is more health related, and donating an object that has been used, worn, and over the years has been collecting dust and dirt can increase the chances of infectious diseases spreading. You still care for your community and your environment when you recycle them, so don’t worry about it.


Recycling may not always be the easiest thing to do, especially in our modern society, but it’s important all the same. It’s not just a safety thing either, but an issue of money. You’ll be able to not only avoid spending money on new things by repurposing, but you can earn tax deductions from your donations. Taking the time to dispose of these items properly can be the difference between maintaining a community and having said community grow and thrive. It’s always easier to just throw away unwanted items, but those items come with unintended consequences. We’re running out of space to put our trash as every passing year more and more landfills reach their capacity. Recycling has far more perks than consequences, and if everyone does their little part in helping, then we’re on the fast track to truly being a self sustaining culture that not only makes our communities healthier and safer, but also prosper.

Minor Products that Cause Major Environmental Damage

All the little things add up. Few things are more true than these words when it comes to environmental safety. Green energy, recycling, reducing carbon emissions, these are all part of our major recent changes in environmental awareness. Still, there is more we can do to improve ourselves, and it may start with how we treat some unexpected items.

Below you’ll find a list of everyday items that you might be unnecessarily throwing away, or that you shouldn’t be using at all.

Are Tea Bags Bad for the Environment?

There are a lot of problems for not only your tea bags, but more important the boxes they come in. A copious amount of paper is being used, but it’s bleached, and has likely been contaminated by the spices and tea leaves inside. They are essentially unsalvageable. Around 30% of tea bags aren’t even compostable. A heat-resistant polypropylene plastic, which can cause damage if introduced into the soil, is found in those 30%.

Granted, tea bags aren’t exactly world ending in their own right. That statistic does mean that the majority of tea bags are able to be composted in some fashion. The bags are a luxury item though, as there are safer alternatives like using a tea strainer, which only needs to be washed out between uses. Buying loose cut tea can even cut down on your overall costs because it allows you to measure out and ration the tea more accurately to reflect your personal taste.

Can K Cups Hurt the Environment?

Introduced in 2004, k cups have exploded in popularity. As of 2015, one in every three American homes have a single-serving, pod-based coffee maker. Thing is, the plastic cups can’t be recycled. Many people don’t realize this since many other plastics are able to be recycled, so why can’t these be?. The reason for this is because of the recycling process. Before they are able to be broken down, the materials must meet a certain criteria. You can’t mix use mixed materials in the recycling process, which is why you at home have to separate your plastics, glasses, and papers from each other. Should these items be processed together they would result in a defective product that is unable to be used, and thusly must be thrown away.

The problems with K cups is that, firstly they aren’t typically cleaned out, secondly they don’t yield enough materials to merit putting them through the process, and thirdly while the cups are plastic, the seals are either paper or metal, which must be tossed out if not separated. This is why almost all pod cups, not just K cups, find themselves tossed into a landfill. Remember reading that one in three American households have a machine that uses these? Now think about how many people live in a house that might use the coffee maker, or how many cups a person might make in a day. While we may never know just how many cups are in landfills, you should keep in mind that the main company sold around 9.8 billion single packs back in 2014. When you consider how old these things are you’ll realize that this results in a scarily high number. That’s enough to wrap around the Equator of the Earth almost 12 times.

Until the company finishes their work on making a more eco-friendly design, our environment may be better off if you get something like a French Press instead.

Can Microbeads be Recycled?

Microbeads are the small pellets that you find in some bottles of body wash or lotion. The idea was that they helped exfoliate your skin as you washed yourself, cleaning you far more efficiently than traditional soaps, and all you had to do was wash them off you when you were done. It was a great idea, except for the fact that the beads were made from plastic.

It may not seem like it, but those tiny little pellets can cause some serious damage to the environment, entirely because of how small they are. The drains always led the beads back to a water source. Water filtration plants can’t do much to prevent that, because they’re too small to be properly filtered. When the beads are out in the water, fish who mistake these beads for food will end up dying, because the beads will get stuck in their bodies. Michigan recorded that in Lake Erie there were about 1.7 million bead particles were present, and New York said over 19 tons of the beads were being washed into the waterways.

In 2015 the Obama Administration passed a bill outlawing the use of these in soaps, lotions, creams and toothpastes, so the point on this is admittedly a little moot. Chances are though that many homes still have these products with the beads in them, and are still using them. If you still have these products in your home then it’d be good for you to reconsider what you’re doing with them.

Are Disposable Cleaning Cloths Safe For the Environment?

Anything from disinfecting wipes to electronic cleaning rags can be considered a disposable cleaning cloth. Though many believe that they are made in a similar way to paper towels, they are, in fact, a completely synthetic material. Not only does this prevent them from being recycled, but it also means that they are far less biodegradable than other cleaning cloths. They sit in landfills for far longer than other non-synthetic rags, which also risks slipping into our waterways.

Thankfully microfiber may be the solution to this problem. Many companies have been using this material instead of other synthetics, meaning that you can wash and reuse these cloths multiple times before having to throw them away. This can also save you money, as you won’t have to purchase anywhere near as money cloths.

Do Disposable Razors Harm the Environment?

Over 2 million disposable razors find their way into the trash each year, alongside their packaging. The razors aren’t made from salvageable materials either, so you can’t recycle them. The blades themselves are made from a very cheap steel, which is then molded to fit permanently onto a plastic handle. Since it’s too dangerous to extract the blades from the plastic the razors end up in the landfill, where they take a very long time to break down. They can take anywhere between 50 to 500 years to fully break down, depending on what materials were used to make the blade.

Thankfully there are reusable razors available, and plenty of them. Straight razors are made with a durable material that lasts about three times longer than disposable ones, and electric razors are known to have long lasting and reliable blade heads. If you’re in a position where you absolutely require a disposable blade, consider Recycline Blades by Preserve, a company that has managed to use completely recyclable materials that won’t end up in the landfills.

Are Menstrual Products Dangerous For the Environment?

Menstrual products are easily amongst the most overlooked items with regards to their environmental impact. Over half of the U.S. population requires these products. That’s around 160 million women who use these products just in the states, which equates to something close to 12 billion sanitation pads and 7 billion tampons. All of these kinds of products are designed to be single use, and therefore go straight to landfills.

Products that don’t contain dioxin or rayon, for example the Diva cup, are able to be washed and used again. There are similar, external options as well which can be washed and reused, like Glad Rags. These products are currently quite pricey, costing as much as three times that of a box of tampons, and will still need replacement over time. At this point in time, they are our only alternative to disposable products.

Are Produce Bags Dangerous to the Environment?

Produce bags are located in every grocery store in the country, all along the produce aisles. Yes, many companies have started using compostable bags, however there’s still a copious amount of the regular kind. Don’t forget, plastic bags can’t be easily recycled. Produce bags also pose such dangers, as they will often litter the ground and get stuck in machinery. Very rarely is a recycling plant able to deal with this problem, so the bags are normally thrown into the landfill.

The best options we all have are to either shop at a store that uses compostable bags (which are indicated on the side of the bag), or to simply bring your own bags that you can wash and reuse with each shopping trip. Unfortunately these aren’t the most efficient options, as many stores will use regular bags, and it can be difficult to bring enough bags to tote about and fill your groceries into. Still, by just using a couple of reusable bags with each trip you’ll be able to significantly cut out on the amount of plastic put into landfills every year.

Can You Recycle Disposable Cutlery?

Because it’s made from polystyrene 1, which is a main ingredient in styrofoam, only about 6% of plastic cutlery is able to be recycled. The cost is why plastic cutlery is so popular. With $10 you can get 1,000 plastic forks, but it can cost $30 to $40 for compostable forks. It can be stressful trying to budget for the environmentally friendlier option, especially for restaurant or business owners who don’t have much profit. This doesn’t include chopsticks, found in most Asian themed restaurants, which require about 4 million trees each year to be cut down in order to produce 57 billion pairs of chopsticks.

There are more options for those who wish to stay eco-friendly, but the restaurant does not offer matching cutlery, they just may require some self-sacrifice. If you’re eating in then you can ask the restaurant owner if they have silverware instead of plastic. You’re more likely to find silverware at a sit-down restaurant, but it won’t hurt to ask. If you’re ordering take-out, request that they don’t place plastic cutlery in your order. Assuming you’ll be heading home to eat, you can use your own silverware instead. If you’re eating at work or away from home then you may need to have some silverware you bring with you. We can reduce the amount of trash added to our landfills each day if we can cut down on the amount of plastic cutlery.

Can You Recycle Batteries?

Many people simply throw away old batteries, especially the small ones, such as AA and AAA. Even if you try to recycle them, all batteries will find their way to the landfill. The reason is that batters are filled with toxins, like nickel and cadmium, which can harm both the environment and humans. The outside metals and plastics take upwards of 100 years to decompose, but the chemicals inside have an indefinite decay time, meaning that they more than likely never break down completely. Water sources that are close by can easily be contaminated, which poses a serious health risk to surrounding communities.

The best thing we can do to avoid batteries in landfills is to either deposit them at a local utility store, such as Staples or Office Depot, or to simply buy rechargeable batteries. Rechargeable batteries are more cost efficient, and they significantly reduce the number of batteries that end up in landfills. It’s expensive at first, but most great investments are. However, over the course of 5 years, you are likely to save yourself over $308.

You Should Never Put These Everyday Items in the Recycling

It’s hard to believe, but currently not everything is recyclable. Good intentions aside, some items simply just can’t be salvaged, and even worse, some items can actually cause more harm than good by going through the recycling process. While it is true that technology is becoming more and more sophisticated every day, sometimes it can’t be helped, and you will need to dispose of some items into landfills. The following article is a list of common household items that you should never recycle, complete with full breakdowns explaining why they should avoid the recycle bin, and more importantly, whether or not it’s worth trying to compost them or to simply toss them into the trash.

Can You Recycle Bottle Caps?

This may come off as a shock, but those caps that come with your bottles of soda or juice aren’t recyclable, and the reason may surprise you. While most caps do appear recyclable on their own, you may find that no matter the material, all caps have a thin plastic coating on the inside. Melting this down would contaminate the whole batch. Before you can melt anything down, you should remember that all the materials have to be separated. Failing to do so would mean the material you would have gained can no longer be used. It’d be far too brittle, weak, or malleable. This idea will continue to present itself throughout the article, so keep it in mind as you continue reading.

Can I Recycle Cosmetics?

While it is true that there are numerous companies making the change over to non-toxic materials in their beauty products, the fact remains that the vast majority of the market still uses very toxic material in cosmetics. Some hazardous, and thusly non-recyclable products, include lipstick, foundations, hair products, and even perfumes, to name a few. They contain carcinogenic and hormone disrupting ingredients that can cause sickness to spread within a community, as well as being unsafe for the environment.

While being as specific as possible, contact your local disposal service about getting rid of old and unwanted beauty products. More information allows them to properly dispose of the product. It’s okay to give too much info than to leave them with vague details. An example would be that perfume bottles often don’t list their ingredients, so they may require a whole separate process for disposal.

This isn’t to say that you can’t still recycle some items. For example, some products (while containing toxic material) still come in glass or plastic containers, which can be recycled still. It’s important not to pour these products down the drain, so if this is the course of action that you wish to take, be sure to dump the contents of the product in the trash (as much as you can), and from there clean the container. Once again, the goal is to avoid pouring the contents down the drain at all, so try to clean them without the use of your sink. Rather than the sink, you can often use a paper towel or rag to get the bottles clean

Taking Care of Take-Out Containers

What makes up a pizza box? Cardboard. Guess what chinese pack boxes are made out of. Also cardboard. Can you guess what’s the common link here? Contaminants. Think back to the bottle caps section, when we discussed the problem with mixing different materials. Food waste is also a part of that topic. Even if you were able to scrape off all of the cheeses, meat scraps and renegade noodles, you’re still left with a box of greases and fatty acids that have soaked into the cardboard. If you try to recycle that you’ll only be adding to the landfill because you’ll be contaminating all of that material. As a rule of thumb, if you use any paperboard products with food, chances are there’s no way to effectively recycle it. It should be noted though that paperboard that has been in contact with food product can be composted, meaning you can put them in a compost bin or a trash bin without fretting over the environmental impact.

How Do You Recycle Styrofoam?

One particular hot topic is over Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), which is more commonly known as styrofoam. Because it’s a synthetic material that easily breaks down, many people believe it’s just as recyclable as plastic or paper. Many also believe that it’s alright to simply burn EPS.

The fact is that styrofoam is recyclable, under certain conditions. Throwing Styrofoam into the recycling bin will result in your load simply being thrown out, as the recycling companies can’t melt it down with other materials and they simply don’t have the time, fund and resources to pick through everyone’s bins to separate them correctly. To make matters more complicated, only certain types of styrofoam can be recycled, the rest have to be thrown away. The only type of styrofoam that can be recycled is PS 6, which will be marked on the back of all the pieces of styrofoam. It isn’t able to be recycled if that PS 6 symbol is not present on the back of it.

You may be putting yourself at risk if you burn styrofoam at home. Burning polystyrene will result in the release of deadly black carbon and carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Not only is this bad for the environment, but it’s also an immediate risk to you and anyone nearby the burning styrofoam, as carbon monoxide poisoning is likely to occur. Nearly 30,000 people a year are hospitalized from carbon monoxide poisoning, and nearly 500 people a year die from it. Needless to say, it’s just better to let the professionals handle it.

However, there are other alternatives to recycling Styrofoam. For example, companies such as Publix, located in the southern part of the USA, allow for donations of styrofoam so that they can reuse it for their own products that they’re packing. You should get online and look for one of the many other companies throughout the nation that offer similar programs. If there are no businesses in your area with a similar program, you can always contact your local recycling plant for a hassle-free drop off, where they will then take care of it’s disposal.

Recycling Shredded Paper

Another hot button you can press is the topic of recycling shredded paper, and it’s not without cause. It isn’t so much a problem regarding the environment as it is the actual logistics of using shredded paper. Every american uses an average of about seven trees a year for paper, and only 66% of recycled paper is even able to be reused. Shredded paper is much more difficult to recycle than regular paper, so of the few companies that are willing to take it, most require for it to be put into clear bags separate from the rest of the recycling.

The best thing you can do is to not shred paper. This isn’t a reasonable thing though, as often shredded paper has sensitive information on it that shouldn’t be easily accessible to the public. As a compromise, you should only shred documents with important information on them, such as checking account information, credit card numbers, anything involving your social security, etc. By minimizing the amount of shredded paper produced, recycling plans can concentrate on maximizing their output from their recycling process.

Should I Recycle Juice and Milk Cartons?

It’s often thought that juice boxes and milk cartons are able to be recycled. Based on the texture one might think they’re a type of cardboard of paper-based material. They are, as it turns out. These items are around 85% paperboard. The big problem is that both juice boxes and milk cartons contain a thin lining of plastic on the inside, which is also known as Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE #4). It keeps the walls of the container safe from dissolving due to exposure to the contents. You may destroy all your hard recycling work if you carelessly toss your juice boxes into your recycling, as it may then be all tossed away.

The way companies have attempted to address this issue is by switching their containers to being purely plastic. A simple solution is to simply by only plastic bottles of milk and juice. The greatest thing you can do while recycling is to cut out the middleman as much as possible, so if you can cut your usage of these boxes and cartons altogether, then the less impact you will have overall, despite using more plastic bottles potentially. Once again, the idea is to reuse as much as possible, and mixing materials will just end up in a landfill anyway.

Can You Recycle a Diaper?

People want to keep landfills from being overwhelmed too quickly, so they often wonder if there is a way to recycle diapers, which can take up to 500 years to decompose when inside a landfill. Again, you have to think about the logistics of it. Your average diaper contains not just paper, but plastic as well. Not to mention that it takes time to sort through contaminants in order to ensure no cross-contamination occurs with the other materials in the recycling plant. Realistically, it’s just not possible to safely recycle diapers.

There are other ways to dispose of diapers, however! One way is to buy more eco-friendly diapers, and luckily for us, there is a massive market of these in circulation. They’re made to decompose at a faster rate, so their time in the landfill is minimized greatly.

Can I Recycle My Ceramics?

Ceramics are usually made from clay and heated in order to take form. Known as sinter, the process involves partially melting the materials used, then allowing them to cool and solidify together in order to maintain their shape. In a sense, it is very similar to glass. However, similar and the same are two very different things. You cannot recycle ceramic. The material is not easy to salvage, so if you break a mug or a plate you’ll have to throw them in the trash. It should be said that you might be able to compost your ceramic pieces, depending on how much clay there is in them.

If you don’t want to send the pieces to the landfill, and you can’t recycle them, you could try reusing them yourself. You might be able to make a small plant pot from a mug that’s lost it’s handle by sanding down where the handle broke off from. Art pieces, like mosaics, can also be created by using broken ceramic. There are even ways to file down and reuse ceramics for gravel.

What Should I Do With My Plastic Bags?

Plastic bags are a big problem. Aside from plastic bottles, plastic bags make up a large percentage of waste in our landfills, our oceans and our national parks. Unfortunately, you can’t recycle these either. Due to the danger these bags pose to machinery and people alike, most recycling plants will be unwilling to take in these bags. For this, there’s a simple solution: Don’t use plastic bags. The only feasible means of keep them out of the environment, due to the lack of means to recycle them, is to stop using them all together. Since both paper and reusable bags have risen in popularity, only luxury is a reason to continue using plastic bags. To reduce your carbon footprint, help the environment, and cut down on overall production costs for businesses, one of the easiest solutions is for you to buy several reusable bags, store them in your car, and have them at the ready whenever you next go shopping.

How can Promotional Products like Custom Lighters Help Businesses?

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The internet has allowed small businesses to grow quickly than in the past, overwhelming your existing business. Numerous advertisements appear on your phone and the walls along the streets, and paying attention to them is just hard.

So how do you get the limelight? How do you stand out and attract new customers without sounding loud or obnoxious? How can you make your business reach the top when your product or service is already the talk of the town?