What Items & Products Recycle?

Recycling

Recycling is the best way to reduce waste materials. Waste or rubbish materials have a negative impact on our environment as well as our health.

Regularly we are creating a huge amount of waste and throw them into the bins. There are few reasons behind this: a growing population uses increased numbers of things, improved or changing lifestyle, etc.

Recycling helps use in multiple ways…

The first thing is you don’t need to use extra space for keeping the wastes. Recycling reduces the pollution, decreases the use of raw materials or natural resources.

Recycling creates a utility of a used or old item by its process. If you have a proper idea of recycling items, you can save money and time rather use the best of a used product.

In this article, I am showing you how to recycle various types of items in different ways. You will find these very informative and useful as I think.

Recycling Items/Products

via GIPHY

Items for recycling are of a big range. From plastic to iron, everything can be recyclable. I am going to talk about how to recycle electrical or electronic items, plastic, paper, household items and so on in this long article.

Contents

Electronic/Electrical Recycling

Recycling for Electronics

Recycling the old electronics require bit attention. You can recycle the electronics such as…

  • Computers
  • Television
  • Radio
  • CD/DVD
  • Hairdryers
  • Electric shaver

Before you recycle the electronics, you need to know something like if there is a plug, battery, personal data etc. in these items. Then you can go for recycling them.

Different recycled item collecting companies purchase these electronics. Sell your old electronics to them. Donate them to charity or any non-profit organization. Sell the item online where old items can be sold.

Recycling Electronic Waste

Electronic waste recycling mostly happens with WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) recycling system.

Electronic waste can be…

  • Electric wire
  • Laptops
  • Cell phone
  • Monitor
  • Battery
  • Camera
  • Monitor etc. Broken or used.

E-waste recycling consists of few step-by-step processes:

Recycling Old Video Tapes Ireland

Recycling VHS tapes or videotapes is not so common matter nowadays. People are now using CDs or DVDs instead of the VHS tapes. The plastic case is recyclable but you can’t recycle the black film of the tape. Put the film into the bin and recycle the plastic case by packing them.

Contact the e-waste recycler who collects and recycles the VHS tapes. You can also sell the plastic cases by weighing them to the plastic factories.

Recycling CDs/DVDs

Recycling CDs and DVDs can be done in several ways. CDs and DVDs are made of Polycarbonate plastics. If you have dozens of old CDs and DVDs, the first thing you can do is to gift or donate them to others.

You can also sell them to recycling items locators. Some people create a mosaic pattern on a photo frame, flower pots etc. by cutting them into small pieces. You can also hang them to decorate your room, balcony or garden.

Recycling Fridges

Fridge, refrigerator, freezer whatever you call are the most helpful thing in our residence. When you are about to recycle them, contact local home electronics recycling companies first. They will purchase the fridges having problems or not.

The companies will make them ready to reuse or separate the necessary items. You can also repair the item and start using the thing again. It doesn’t cost a lot to repair the fridges. You can also give them to others unless you are not throwing to waste collectors.

Recycling Apple

Recycling Mac or Apple devices has become easier when Apple itself arranged the Apple Recycling Program. When you are bored using the old or damaged Mac, you can go for recycling it. Apple Inc. trades with you for the device by giving money as Apple Store gift card.

You can get up to $1000 for your old Mac. The company doesn’t think about the condition or model of your device. On the other hand, if the device is repairable, then repair for reuse or seek for the buyer who buys the recycled item.

Recycling Hard Drives

Hard disk or hard drive may be small in size but does a lot of thing for us. Throwing the disk drive to the bin isn’t a good idea. You should wipe the drive while you want to recycle it. There are professionals who can do this perfectly.

Destroy this device with drilling holes on it or hammering or magnetizing it. If the hard drive is for Mac, then send the drive to Apple recycling center for money.

The last thing can be recycling the aluminum part of the hard drive. Open the hard drive with a screwdriver. Then cut the seal of the device. Later remove the magnet and r/w arm, data disk, motor etc.

You can get up to half a pound of aluminum from a standard hard drive. Sell the aluminum part to the aluminum buyers.

Recycling Electrical Goods

Recycling electrical goods in Carlow, Galway or Cork city of Ireland is pretty simple. Bring your old electrical goods to civic amenities for recycling. You can also complete the task by attending in special free WEEE collection events in these areas.

Electrical wastes like TV, batteries, bulbs, fridges, hairdryers etc. are accepted to these events. Many electrical retailers help to recycle their sold items.

You can go to them and recycle the things for free. The public collection events or days of WEEE are most effective in recycling them in large amount. Anything with battery or plug can be recycled through these events.

Recycling Phones or Recycling Mobile Phones

I always like to use the new mobile phone though I am satisfied with the current one.

But:

What do I need to do recycle the old one if I want to buy a new one?

Well, there are many phone recycling programs available in your area. It doesn’t matter where you live. Recycling mobile phones for charity is also possible.

The process of recycling cell phones is very easy. Open the phone cover and separate the metals. Energy-from-incineration recovers the plastic of the phone.

The cover plastic or outer body’s plastic is applicable for moldings. Then you can re-use the old parts of the mobile. You can use the Aerials, battery connectors, PCB, ICs, keyboard, microphone, speaker etc. of the phone again.

Recycling Old Computers

You can’t throw your old laptop for recycling to the bin. In fact, it’s ridiculous. Even you have no option to put the large PC in the garbage can. So, it’s better to recycle it properly.

If your laptop or computer is okay but older to use, first you need to back up the data to other devices or online. Resetting the computer can also sort out the problem by making the OS ready to reuse. If you don’t want to use the same one, you can donate that to others. Amazon trade-in program provides Amazon gift card for your used laptop.

Multiple websites are available online for selling your used computers or laptops. Best Buy, Staples, Gazelle etc. are popular websites to give you money by showing and selling your device to the buyers. Each component of laptops and computers are important. And you can sell or reuse the parts by repairing them.

Hard drive, RAM, DVD-ROM, power supply, graphics card, cooling fan, CPU etc. can bring you a lot of money. Either you can sell them separately or entirely.

Recycling Cartridge/Toner

Millions of cartridges are used every year throughout the world. These toners or cartridges are recyclable and reusable. The better option is to refill the dry empty cartridge.

It helps to save money without buying a new one. Recycling HP ink cartridges are always tension-free. HP Planet Partners use a “closed loop” recycling process to separate and refine the cartridge for preparing it to use again.

Canon Inkjet Printer Cartridge Recycling Program offers its own cartridges recycling without a single penny. You can call the local FedEx office for recycling Canon in cartridges.

Xerox customers also have the same facility like HP, Canon etc. This company also has trustable recycling Xerox toner cartridges program. Similar to these companies, there are lots of free recycling programs available.

Plastics Recycling

Recycling Plastics

Plastics are of multiple types like PET, HDPE, PVC etc. Most of them are recyclable and reusable. When you want to recycle the plastic, know about the type of plastic by checking the recycling logo or recycling sign on the item’s body.

You should be aware of recycling which plastic. Recycling hard plastic and recycling soft plastic both are possible. Some of the rigid or hard plastics are HDPE tubs, carts, crates, bucket etc.

These are some of the soft plastics:

  • Food bags
  • Confectionary packets
  • Wrapper
  • Shopping bag
  • Bottles etc.

Sort out the items and wash them properly for recycling. Shredding helps to tear up the washed rigid or soft plastics into small pieces. Later on, extrude the plastics.

Heat compression is the most used method to recycle plastic. A large amount of plastics is compressed to a single place at a time with the heat compression method.

This method is preferably suitable for recycling hard plastics. Thermal depolymerization, pyrolysis etc. methods are effective in recycling the mixed and multi-layered plastics.

Pyrolysis can change the hard or soft plastics into fuel and carbons. Through monomer (reversed polymerization reaction) can create new polymer from a condensed polymer or the recycling plastic.

Plastic recycling without water is also possible nowadays. Ak Inovex has invented new technology to recycle the plastics without any touch of water.

This technology can recycle almost 4/5 portion of all the plastic types. Even you save energy by recycling them with this method.

Recycling Plastic Bottles

Recycling plastic bottles can be done in lots of ways. I have found almost 45 ways to recycle used plastic bottles.

You need to clean the bottle first to reuse the bottle as a different helpful tool.

You can use the bottle as a vertical garden, chandelier, broom, spoon lamp, ornament stand, lake boat etc. and many more.

Plastic bottles with caps recycling require heavy temperature as well as energy. If you want to recycle the bottles with caps, you will need to bear more expenses.

Bottle caps are made of PET plastic with a melting point of 5000 F and just bottle is of PP with 3200 F melting point. This is the major reason to recycle the bottles without caps.

Paper Recycling

Paper is always reusable after using them. The process of recycling paper is also simple. When you put your draft paper or used paper in the recycle bin, the recycle items collectors take them to their recycling centers.

Then they sort out the recycling paper by grading. After sorting out, these papers are taken to the mill machine to shred them into smaller pieces. Now, the actual recycling task begins.

Water, chemical and those papers are mixed to break them down into fibers. A screen is used to remove any adhesive and other components from the papers.

At the last stage, the recycling workers clean the ink or any color from the fibers.

Recycling shredded paper is considered as recycling the mixed paper.

Shredded paper is being baled after the separation from other grade papers.

Then the pulpers turn the papers into fibers with water and chemicals. Then the fibers are spun to roll and dry to use them again as paper.

Wrapping paper is used to wrap the things and make the package cover interesting and beautiful. Not all of the wrapping papers are recyclable. Recycling wrapping paper is only available when the paper is passed on the scrunch test.

Foil or glitter-decorated papers are not suitable for recycling. All these are equal to recycling Xmas wrapping paper.

You don’t need to think about staples when recycling paper staples. The recycling companies have the equipment to remove the staples and paper clips.

Battery Recycling

Batteries are of multiple types and most of them are suitable for recycling. Button cells, lead-acid automotive batteries are recycled at maximum numbers. Lead-acid batteries require to be ground first to recycle the batteries.

Then the acid is neutralized. Polymers get separated through this process. The outcome of the process is used to prepare new batteries in some cases.

Recycling lithium batteries is possible in several steps. First, the batteries need to be discharged and disassembled. Then other processes happen like mechanical, hydrometallurgical, pyrometallurgical etc.

Recycling UPS batteries are done by the professionals. They separate the plastic and lead components first. Then they crush the battery into small sized pieces.

The plastic part is recycled according to the plastic recycling process. The recycled lead of the UPS is used for various purposes.

Bulbs Recycling

Recycling light bulbs are necessarily important. Bulbs like CFL, fluorescent and other types of bulbs contain mercury that is emitted when we use them. Recycling bulbs prohibit the emission of mercury.

Beside this, we can use the glass, metal and other parts of bulbs through recycling. Usually, the local waste collection agency takes the recycled bulbs. The old type of bulbs such as incandescent can’t be recycled.

Just throw the incandescent bulbs in the bin. LED bulbs don’t contain any mercury and are most effective bulbs than others. But these bulbs are quite pricey. You can give these LEDs to the recycling agency.

Glass Recycling

Glass, an important thing in our everyday life. Every part of the glass is 100% recyclable. Glass is made of sands, soda ash, limestone, cullet etc. Recycled glass is equally popular to the new glass.

Even this reduces the cost of buying new glass things such as containers, bottles, jars etc. The glass treatment plants or recycling company takes the glass from the consumers.

They crush, melt and mold the old glass items and prepare new things.

Recycling glass bottles may not bring you a lot of money. But this can save your money by repurposing the bottles and jars. Clean the jars and bottles before you want to recycle them.

Then put them into the bin and the waste collectors will take them. Few types of jars are rarely acceptable to the recycling agencies such as food jar, dairy jar. Repurposing the glass jars is a great idea.

You can store dry foods in the old glass jars. Bottle or jars can be used as a candle holder, vase or flowerpot. Even you can decorate your garden with colorful glass bottles. There are lots of ways to use the glass by recycling old glasses.

Donate or gift the old eyeglasses or reading glasses to your friends and others. If the glasses are broken, then you can repair them easily or give them to a recycling agency.

Recycling reading glasses may also bring you money as there are many collectors available to buy them.

Waste Recycling

Recycling yard waste or recycling garden waste is known as Green waste. This is because recycling garden or yard wastes are helpful for the environment. You can make compost to use as soil conditioner with the recycling garden waste. All these yards or garden wastes are shredded and laid out to the long pile.

Then the waste turns out to be helpful compost. Almost 90% of the yard and garden waste are suitable for recycling.

Recycling household waste is also pretty simple. You can take the waste to bring banks, civic amenity sites, recycling centers, curbside collection centers etc. Compost the things which are compostable.

Recycling e-waste is more needed than the garden waste. Because you can’t compost them, even they don’t mix up with soil if you put them under the soil. E-waste is the broken pieces of electronics.

The chance of using these pieces again is not enough. So, it’s better to sell them to the waste recycling agencies.

Appliances Recycling

Recycling old appliances helps to increase the space of the house. This also helps to maintain the good environment inside of the house.

An appliance such as…

  • Refrigerator
  • Iron
  • Washing machine
  • Stove
  • Room cleaner etc.

Are competitively larger than ordinary recycling items.

But you can recycle them too though they are heavy and hard to move or pick up. These things may get damages over time. Some of them may not work well.

Even there can raise safety issues with the appliances. When all these problems appear, you should think of recycling appliance.

The household appliance is harder to re-use and it costs a lot. So, it’s better to grab a new one instead of the old one. Used appliance recycling can bring you the pleasure of buying new items.

Selling the items to scrap metal collector is the best idea. They collect scrap metal from these appliances. You should also by appliances from those manufacturers who offer recycling service to the customers.

Even you can sell your used items on various online sites. Many of the people would be happy to use the old appliances. This is quite money-saving and handy to have something useful.

You can also donate the item to non-profit organizations to increase the competence of the items. The last option can be repairing the items if that is possible. Shade Tree Appliance and Recycling, Xcel Appliance Recycling is the popular appliance collectors for recycling in the United States.

Furniture Recycling

As every country has a huge quantity of home furniture, there is always a chance of old furniture disposal. Home or business purposes, new furniture always increases the beauty of the place.

Furniture such as table, chair, bed, wardrobe, cabinet etc. may get discolored, scratches, another type of damages with the pace of time. You can’t reuse the broken furniture properly as an example, you can’t seat on the chair.

So, you must recycle the furniture and purchase a newer one.

Recycling furniture without fire labels is only possible by selling them to the professionals. You can usually recycle the items as these can hamper the environment and cause unexpected events.

On the other hand, you can give the furniture to non-profit organizations, shelters, and charities.

Water Recycling

Recycling water bottles, containers, filters, can, tank etc. are supportive of the environment.

Even recycling these items can bring you a lot of money. As water bottles, containers etc. are made of plastic, you can follow the ways to recycle the plastics I have mentioned earlier.

Cans are made of aluminum and you can recycle them by selling to scrap metal buyers. Moreover, you can contact local amenities, recycled item collectors.

Plant/Tree Recycling

It’s nothing to surprise to think about recycling plant or recycling Xmas trees. We spend millions of dollars each year on fresh-cut Christmas trees. This is not actually any unwanted or useless expenses.

Rather it’s one way to decorate our house in the holiday season. But recycling your Christmas tree is equally important. You should not just throw away the plants.

There are multiple ways to recycle the “real” trees, not the artificial one.

You need to remove the ornaments, lights, tinsel, tree stands, nails etc. before you go for recycling. Real trees are used to make compost. There are various city wise tree collection events planned each year.

You should provide your trees to them. You can also look the recycling centers who are ready to get the recycling plant from you.

Shoe Recycling

Shoes are also recyclable. Recycling worn out shoes is a great idea. Suppose, your shoes have got the old look, discolored, tore.

Now you should think of recycling the pair of shoes instead of keeping them as waste or throwing to basket. Recycling old shoes makes the things turned into value-added products.

Before recycling the shoes, you can think about upcycling the shoes. Decorate your old shoes with glue, glitter, lace, thread, fabric, cotton etc. Likewise, it’s fun to decorate or stylize the old worn out shoes.

Selling the old items to earn some cold cash. There are lots of websites who can showcase your shoes to be sold. There are programs like Reuse-a-shoe by Nike held to collect the worn-out shoes.

They collect these shoes to create athletic and playground surfaces. You can also donate the shoes to the needy persons, non-profit organizations or charities.

Cans Recycling

Cans and bottles are mostly used items of these days. These cans may be paint, aerosol, tin, trash cans. Due to the heavy use of these types of cans and bottles, we need to ensure the proper recycling cans and bottles.

Recycling paint cans require a bit of attention. You should keep cans dry and empty before you recycle them. Metal cans are more preferable than the plastic cans. You should not cut, crush or compress for recycling aerosol cans.

Remove the loose parts of the aluminum and tin-made aerosol cans. Recycling tin cans don’t need you to remove the label attached to their body. Through the recycling process, these labels are easily removable.

You can find a recycling bin for cans available at the local market. Grab one to recycle the cans and bottles easily. Recycling can tab are also possible in the ways you recycle the metal items.

Cans recycling machine can turn your cans into money. These machines are set nearby your home location. Recycling and trash can combo are best for any recycling purpose. You can use them as bin or trash can at the same time.

Foil Recycling

The foil is usually made of aluminum or tin. It is used to cover the food items, or in the packaging of food. Recycling aluminum foil is directly possible. But these foils get contaminated with the food or the leftovers.

So, when you are about to recycle tin foil or aluminum foil, you need to clean the foil wrap first. Then make a ball with all the foil sheets and later throw them into the recycle bin.

Contact or provide the recycled foil to the recycling centers.

Christmas/Xmas Recycling

There are few questions about recycling Christmas cards.

Are Tesco recycling Christmas cards?

Do you know the institution who recycling Christmas cards?

Yes, there are multiple collection banks in the supermarket like Tesco are collecting your used Xmas cards.

You may know that most of the gift cards are made of paper. The paper part of these cards is available for recycling old Christmas cards.

You can recycle these cards on your own in a couple of ways. Either you recycle them by yourself by keeping them in to recycle bin or sell them to these collection banks.

Remove the glitter or ribbon from the Christmas cards. These glitters, ribbon, ornaments are not suitable for recycling.

Xmas light is another exciting thing for celebrating Christmas or Xmas night. Earlier, people used CFL, fluorescent etc. types of Xmas lights.

I have already mentioned why these types of lights or bulbs need to be recycled. Nowadays, LED lights are getting popular.

You can reuse the lights for the next event. You can also recycle the Xmas lights to the recycling centers. They will pay you for the used items. Lots of recycled items collectors are offering to give them used holiday LED lights. Choose what you prefer best.

Cup Recycling

Coffee cups are the very useful thing to have a glimpse of different taste and feeling. These coffee cups are made of paper or plastic. Paper-based coffee cups are easily recyclable.

They are creased with polyethylene membrane for water-proofing. There are also wax-coated, biodegradable coffee cups are available. Polystyrene coffee cups are a bit tough to recycle.

Recycling of coffee cups is a must to save the environment and reducing the landfill.

Recycling K cups can’t be completely done at a time. Because these are made of the combination of plastic, aluminum, organic metal, and paper.

You need to separate the components of K-cups. You can re-use the separated pod plastic at your home. Mini-pots, picture hanger, screw etc. can be made from the recycled K cups.

Recycling Nespresso Pods can be done by professionals. Nespresso offers their recycling facility for the users. The company collects the discarded coffee pods and recycle with their technology.

You can contact the Nespresso Boutiques to help you with recycling Nespresso capsules.

Oil Recycling

Used oil refers to the oils we get after using in cooking, motor engine etc. These oils get dirty or impurity through dirt, water, chemicals etc. Through the purification process, we can reuse the used oils.

There are a couple of benefits of recycling used oils. Industrial burner oil is used oil which we can get through dewatering, filtering, demineralizing etc. Mold oil, hydraulic oil, bitumen-based products etc. are all related to recycling used oil.

Recycling used cooking oil can make biodiesel which is used in diesel engines. Hydrocracking or Hydrogenation method is used to prepare the used vegetable oil for reuse.

You can provide the used oil to the recycling centers. They will make the recycling used motor oil.

Toy Recycling

Toys are the favorite things for the little kids. Sometimes they break them playfully.

Sometimes the batteries get discharged. When the parts of the toys are broken, you can reuse them by repairing. If repairing is not possible at all, then you should go for recycling old toys.

The batteries, remote controls etc. are easy to recycle. If you don’t want to keep the old toys, give them to others. You can also sell them if the amount is enough through advertising in a local newspaper.

Lots of charities are there who will be glad to get them. Recycling toy truck is also possible through selling them on multiple web stores. Things you need to care, each of the parts (plastic, electric, metal) can be recycled in different ways.

X-Ray Recycling

X-ray film contains silver those are extracted through recycling. The old Xrays are heated at up to 1K degree Celsius to meltdown and separate silver. After separation, the plastic residue is also recycled.

Recycling X-ray film gives silver to use in making ornaments, silver plating, e-components etc. You don’t need to discard the X-rays by your own. Give them to recycling centers. They will pay you for recycling the X-rays.

Candle Recycling

Those who love to use a candle in any celebration or regular purposes can recycle the candles. You don’t need to purchase a new candle unless you have the option to recycle and reuse them.

There are multiple ways for recycling candle jars, recycling candle wax etc. You can make new candles from the old used candles. Meltdown the used candle in a pot and mix some colors.

Then pour the melted candle in a design pot or cup and let it be cold. Thus, you can make different colored beautiful shaped and designed candles. You can make torch candles, citronella candles etc. with the old candles.

Miscellaneous Recycling

TDF (Tire Derived Fuel) comes from recycling tire chips which are a fuel used for heat plants and cement ovens. Recycling mattress can be done by recycling the parts separately.

Springs, coils, foam, fibers, wood etc. are recyclable in different ways.

For recycling old clothes, first, select the items which to keep and which to recycle. Make cloth rugs, or redesign the clothes for making use of them. You can also donate them to the charities or poor kids.

Repair the electronic devices such as microwave, fan, washing or vending machines etc. if it is possible. You can also use parts of this equipment.

There are more things those can be recycled in proper ways.

These things can be.

  • Stickers
  • Rubber
  • Green bin
  • Jewelry
  • Ornaments
  • Toothbrushes
  • Pillows
  • Keys
  • Hangers
  • Bags
  • Newspaper
  • Magnet
  • Xerox

Final Thoughts

If I start telling how to recycle the items we use, it would take a long period of time to describe them separately. I have included those which are more important in this article.

Check the ways to recycle your items. There are multiple options such as donation, gift, repair etc. are available in front of you. Now it’s up to you what to do with your old equipment or products. Happy recycling!

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