How Can I Recycle at My Summer Party? Summer is just around the corner! The warm weather means everyone can start planning parties and spend more time outside with their friends and family. Whether you are starting the grill for the first time or planning birthday parties, Chicago summers are perfect for [...]

Battery Disposal Can I Throw My Batteries in My Garbage or Recycling? Your Recycling Bin - NO Do not place any type of battery in your recycling bin. Although there may be recycling symbols on batteries, those symbols represent its ability to be recycled at a proper facility [...]

Tangled Plastic Slows Recycling Efforts In the world of recycling, tanglers are anything that can be, you guessed it, tangled in the machines used to sort recyclables. With worldwide recycling contamination levels on the rise, it’s important that these tanglers are disposed [...]

Can I Recycle Cartons? Yes, most cartons that are found on the grocery store shelf or in the refrigerated section are recyclable. Relatively new to the recycling stream, cartons are an important addition to curbside recycling programs. Often called aseptic containers, these cartons are sanitized and sterilized before [...]

Medical Sharps and Needle Disposal When it comes to disposing of “sharps” we’ll get right to the point.  Medical needles, syringes, lancets and auto injectors are all considered to be “sharps” and must be disposed of properly.  When sharps are just loosely thrown into the garbage, they pose a potential risk [...]

Light Bulb Recycling and Disposal Imagine for a moment that it’s 1879. You take a few minutes to rest and read the newspaper. The room is dimly lit by a single candlestick or gas lantern. There is a story in the paper about a man named Thomas Edison who was working on [...]

Glass Recycling at Home A single lightning strike on a sandy beach creates glass in about one second. Once glass is created, by nature or humans, it never really goes away. It’s estimated that glass takes one million years to fully degrade in a landfill. When we recycle glass, we are not [...]

Is My Candy Wrapper Recyclable? Whether you crave sweet, sour or chocolate candies this Valentine’s Day, we all get that similar feeling when we reach into the bag and realize we’ve already eaten the last piece. Bummer. Without even realizing it, we’ve collected a pile of wrappers (or in some cases [...]

National Pizza Day – Pizza Box Recycling  Typically, cardboard can be thrown in your recycling container and recycled many times, but pizza boxes are the exception. Greasy pizza boxes can ruin good cardboard. Water is used to make new cardboard. Grease from soiled paper products forms [...]