What’s Really Recyclable In Michigan? Let’s Find Out

The topic of recycling in Michigan comes up a lot, between what you can recycle and what you can’t recycle.

The problem is that there are some things you think you would be able to recycle, except that they have been used, and you are now potentially risking damaging the sorting machines at the recycling plant.

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It’s important to know that even though the item you’re thinking about recycling may fit the description, there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Recently, Treehugger listed a number of things that we think may be fine to recycle, but in fact need to be thrown away.

Here are some of the things that they talk about and why it’s not safe to throw them into the recycling bin:

To-Go Coffee Cups

Single-use coffee cups are lined with polyethylene, which is great for keeping the cup from becoming a mess of wet paper, but very difficult and expensive to recycle.

Pizza Boxes

Cheese is oily. There is cheese on pizza. Pizza comes in cardboard boxes that get saturated with pizza cheese oil ... since the oil can not be separated from the cardboard, the recycled material becomes much harder to sell.

Yogurt Cups

Plastics 3 to 7 (used for things like yogurt cups, spread tubs and vegetable oil bottles) were once allowed in most places in the U.S. But now that China has banned used plastics, many municipalities no longer accept them since there is no longer much of a market for them.

Bottle Caps

Some places do not allow caps; and some places do as long as the cap is firmly screwed on to the bottle. Again, check with your local rules.

Dirty Food Containers

Even if the container is allowable in your area, a take-out food container or a milk carton with bits of food or liquid can render a whole batch contaminated.

Shopping Bags 

While we might wish that plastic bags — notorious for dissolving into microplastics and killing wildlife — could be sent to processors with our other recycling, they shouldn’t be.

Dirty Diapers

I'm sorry...people have done this?