LAKES AREA RECYCLING SERVICES

Brake rotors, wheels & tires, batteries, and other metal car parts aren’t recyclable in curbside recycling program. The only metal materials that can be recycled are generally food packaging, such as aluminum beverage cans and metal food cans. Heavy metal parts should be taken to a scrap metal dealer.

Any kind of compressed gas tank in your recycling is UNSAFE. This includes the likes of refillable propane tanks used for camp stoves, disposable propane canisters, butane canisters, helium balloon tanks, and oxygen tanks. These pose massive health and safety risks. Compressed gas cylinders could rupture and catch fire, so it’s vital that they’re disposed of properly at a safe drop-off location!

Similar to propane tanks, plastic gas cans pose a large risk of explosion and fire!

This type of plastic is rarely labeled with a Resin Identification Code (recycle number) which is needed to identify the type of plastic for proper recycling. In addition, this material is usually quite dirty and can contaminate the true recyclable plastics.

These are another item that can’t be recycled because one toy will often contain a variety of different plastic types. In order for a plastic item to be recycled, it must first contain only 1 type plastic, making plastic toys nearly impossible to recycle in a residential curbside recycle program.

No batteries are allowed in your curbside recycle container, and Lithium Batteries are perhaps the most dangerous. For starters, they’re often filled with acid and some types can start fires when they get smashed with other recyclables. Lithium-ion batteries usually contain a metal coil and a flammable lithium-ion fluid. Tiny metal fragments float in the liquid. The contents of the battery are under pressure, so if a metal fragment punctures a partition that keeps the components separate or the battery is punctured in our truck or recycling facility, the lithium reacts with water in the air vigorously, generating high heat and often a fire!

Many hardware stores accept batteries for recycling.

This one might surprise people – it’s a commonly made mistake when recycling. No plastic bags are able to be recycled at standard recycling facilities. Not only are they not recyclable at single sort recycle facilities, but when people put them in the container loose, they can blow away and cause havoc on the equipment used to process recyclable material causing down time to equipment.

Curbside recycling is collected and processed at Material Recovery Facilities (MRF’s). One of the common items that we find in the recycling stream are consumer plastic bags. I.e. Target bags, Wal-Mart bags, etc. These plastic bags cause havoc at the sorting facility and create increased downtime. Please, do not place loose bags in your recycle container.

NO. You may feel you are being tidy by bagging your recyclables before you put them in the cart. But all your hard work can actually be working against the recycling process. Instead of bagging recyclables, please dump loose materials into the curbside bin.