Heavy snow and difficult travel expected again, heaviest snow in southern Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Minnesota is generating more waste every year, and has set a big goal to increase recycling.  The state’s pollution control agency 

 the combined organics and recycling rate is 45.3 percent. They want to increase that 

 by 2030. Minnesota officials say around two-thirds of waste headed to landfills and trash burners could have been composted, reused or recycled. 

 For some residents, it’s just a matter of not knowing how to properly navigate the recycling process. 

MPR News has gathered general information from recycling guides across the state and put them in one place. 

It’s important to note that you should always consult recycling guides from your city, township, county, recycler or waste management company because local rules vary

What does not belong in my recycling bin?

“Plastic bags are a huge problem. They get tangled in the equipment and cause two to three hours of downtime a day just to cut them out,” said Susan Heffron, recycling market development coordinator at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. 

To recycle your plastic bags, you can take them to collection bins at stores like 

, Goodwill, JCPenney, Lunds & Byerlys, Kohl’s, Kowalski’s Markets, Target, Walmart and metro area food co-ops. 

“We only want glass that held food or beverages. No ceramics, light bulbs, or dinner plates,” said Heffron. “Scrap metal and pots and pans may seem okay, but they can damage equipment. Same with propane tanks, garden hoses, and holiday lights — we call those tanglers.”

To give metal items a better chance of being repurposed, take them to your local scrap recycler. To develop a recycling habit, experts suggest beginning with a few items that you use most often. 

“Start simple,” said Michael Bennett, executive director of the Recycling Association of Minnesota. ”Dump those cans and bottles into your bin. Keep plastic bags out of the bin, period, because it just causes a nightmare.”  

What do the numbers on plastic containers mean?

On the back of almost all plastic containers you’ll find an arrowed recycling symbol with a number in the middle. It’s meant to categorize the type of plastic, and doesn’t always mean it can be recycled no matter what. 

“I think most people say, if it’s got those chasing arrows on the bottom, it must be recyclable,” Bennett said. “This has been a sore point for about 30 years.” 

are no federal laws that help regulate the use of the recycling

In Minnesota, the general rule is that recyclable plastics should have a 1, 2 or 5 inside their recycling symbols to be eligible for curbside pickup. Plastics with 3, 4, 6 or 7 are not collected curbside in most areas: 

While the numbers 3, 4, 6 and 7 on plastic items indicate an item is technically recyclable, many recycling programs across the country find that it can be economically and logistically taxing to send those plastics through the recycling process. 

“It all comes down to the end markets. What can be bought and remade into something new? That’s why we focus on 1, 2, 5,” said Heffron. 

 like arsenic, mercury and cadmium,  so 

most cities and counties do not offer curbside e-waste pickup.

 Putting e-waste in your blue recycling bins is prohibited, and can result in fires in the bins, the recycling truck or at the sorting facility. 

If you have a desire to get rid of old electronics, and want them to be repurposed, you could try donating them to certified recycling centers, special collection events and retail stores like  

Here are MPCA-recommended locations to drop off e-waste: 

 is one of the few areas that offers e-waste curbside pickup for its residents. For e-waste pickup, residents are required to pay $20 per electronics pickup. You must schedule ahead and put items near the front door, back door or garage door. 

Before dropping off your e-waste, factory reset all phones and laptops, remove hard drives from computers and securely erase your data.  

list of certified e-waste recycling locations, visit MPCA’s website.

To properly prepare your recyclables for pickup day, make sure all food and drink containers are empty, rinsed and not crushed. 

“Do the best you can. It doesn’t need to be spotless, but rinse out the jar, give it a shake, dump it out, leave it to dry,” Bennett said. 

If the top is clean, then you should recycle that as well. Leave plastic caps on plastic bottles, no caps should be put in the bin on their own. 

Paper and cardboard can be loosely dumped in bins and should be made as flat as possible, and ideally not bigger than 3 foot square.    

Remove the pumps from spray bottles. Make sure that when you recycle containers like milk jugs, juice cartons or cans, you don’t crush them ahead of tossing in bins. 

Do not include plastic bags in your recycling, even if they are holding recyclables. 

Where do my recyclables go once picked up?

Once the recycling truck has screeched down your street, it heads back to a central facility. Eventually your recyclables will go through a process of both mechanical and manual sorting. 

“Glass gets crushed. Steel is pulled by magnets. Aluminum is separated using an eddy current. Plastics are sorted using AI robots, optical sorters and more humans,” said Bennett. 

After sorters screen out anything that’s non-recyclable, a machine will then compress each material type into large bales. 

Once weighed, the bales are labeled and sold to local, national or international manufacturers who may turn them into new products. Some bales may sit at the recycling processor for days, weeks or even months. 

“I should stress that recycling doesn’t work unless there’s someone who wants to buy that material and get it into new stuff,” says Paul Gardner, board chair of the Recycling Association of Minnesota. 

If sold, the bales that possibly contain some of your recyclables, will be made into everyday items like 

tires, paper notebooks, furniture and planters.

Now that you’ve read through the guide, test your knowledge by taking the quiz below: 

Environmental News

Shows

All Things Considered

NewsPartners

Homepage

Jaylan Sims

Author

For some residents, recycling is tedious, for others, it’s just a matter of not knowing how to properly navigate the process. 

Minnesota recycling made simple: What to know before you throw

Go Deeper.

Like this?