Start saving your clear plastic “clamshell” containers – the ones that often hold berries or salad. Rumpke will start accepting those and clear plastic egg cartons as recyclables in November.
And did you know you can already recycle clear plastic to-go cups, like the ones that hold iced coffee – unless they have that little green line that reads “compostable.”
Recycling can be confusing. That’s why Matthew King set out to answer people’s questions. He visits farmers markets and posts on social media to bust common recycling myths. He also takes hard-to-recycle items like pet food bags, Swiffer pads, gift cards and more. King takes those things to the specialty recycler TerraCycle in Dayton.
Helping folks recycle right
Last week, King was at the Upper Arlington Farmers Market. His booth sported a big, yellow sign that read, “Recycling Questions Answered.” Plastic bags hung from the tent, swaying in the wind. Yogurt containers and Tupperware dangled from a string. And there were plenty of signs listing facts about recycling.
Donna Berlo, of Columbus, stopped by the tent to ask if she’d been recycling her paper plates correctly.
“Oh, paper plates,” King said. “Well, no, you can't – you cannot recycle paper plates. No, no. Food contamination is like the worst.”
“Oh wow, I’m really doing this all wrong,” Berlo lamented.
She pointed to an egg carton on the table and asked, “is that okay?”
King, wearing his “Make American Green Again” hat and a polo with a recycling symbol, explained yes, the cardboard egg carton is recyclable, though it probably can only be recycled one more time.
Some things, like aluminum and glass, can be recycled repeatedly. Others can only be recycled a limited number of times.
King, of Columbus, doesn’t have a degree in sustainability, but he knows a lot about recycling. He started researching recycling in 2020 when his hometown of Cleveland lost its recycling contractor.
“I just thought no one else was doing it, so I'd be the one to promote it,” he said.
He said plenty of people are confused, and it’s not their fault. Recycling isn’t always straightforward.
Some common misconceptions:
“Number one, the number one worst thing you can do is put contamination into recycling. When in doubt, throw it out,” King said.
Contamination can include food, like sauce and cheese on a cardboard pizza box, chemicals, tape or sticker paper.
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King said plastic water bottles should be recycled with their caps on, because otherwise, the caps are too small. Most of the time, an item has to be at least three inches by three inches – or about the size of your fist – to be recycled in Ohio.
Glass jars with metal lids, though, need to be separated. Otherwise, the whole thing might end up in a landfill, King said. Though, at some recycling facilities, the glass will break and separate from the jar lid and make it through the facility. But the materials can’t be recycled if they stay together.
“They want the metal and they want the glass. But you have to put them in separately,” King said.
King says keeping different materials separate is a big part of recycling. You can recycle a plastic Amazon bag if you remove the paper label, he said.
And caps should come off milk and broth cartons, according to Rumpke Waste & Recycling.
Labels don’t necessarily have to come off plastic containers and jars. It’s good to rinse them out, but they don’t have to be completely clean. In fact, King says scrubbing is just a waste of water.
For things like peanut butter jars, King recommends letting a dog do some of the work, or leaving the container to soak overnight so the water dissolves the food.
It’s all, well, confusing.
Berlo certainly thought so. “To be the only one that's messing this up. What do you do with everything that people are putting in, thinking is it getting recycled," he asked. “What happens to all that?”
Sorting it all out
Items that can’t be recycled typically do go to the landfill.
When people recycle correctly, however, about 98% of the material that comes into a facility actually does get recycled, according to Rumpke Waste East Area Communication Manager Jeff Meyers.
Myers said Rumpke runs items through the facility twice to make sure they get as much as they can before the truly unsalvageable items are sent away.
“One of the primary complaints is, or the primary comment, is that it isn't happening and everything just goes to the landfill. And I can say that is not true,” Myers said.
Rumpke handles curbside recycling in Columbus and much of central Ohio. Most items recycled here go to Rumpke’s new $100 million Resource and Recycling Center near Linden.
The more than 220,000-square-foot facility that opened this summer has been billed as the largest and most advanced in North America. It uses scanners with artificial intelligence to help sort materials before they’re bundled with similar items and sent to partners who turn them into something new.
What can or can't be recycled?
Rumpke accepts lots of items for recycling, but there are some things it does not take. Those items include garden hoses, electrical cords or anything that could gum up machines. Rumpke also does not accept batteries, because they can be dangerous.
“They get squashed and they spark and they cause fires. Even dead batteries are dangerous,” Meyers said.
But batteries can be taken to some specialty recyclers, like the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio’s Convenience Center on the city’s south side. IKEA accepts alkaline batteries. Home Depot and Lowe’s take rechargeable battery packs from power tools and cell phones. Staples and Best Buy will recycle rechargeable lithium-ion and nickel batteries, according to King.
Rumpke also doesn’t accept plastic bags, but Kroger bags can be returned to Kroger.
Rumpke has a total of 14 recycling facilities in several states, including a specialty glass recycling facility in Dayton. Meyers said the company is always looking to expand what they accept, but that requires two factors to align: items have to be capable of going through Rumpke’s machinery and Rumpke needs a partner that can turn that specific material into something new.
Meyers said the best thing folks can do is familiarize themselves with the acceptable items list. People can also start thinking about recycling when doing their grocery shopping instead of after the fact.
“If you're buying products which are recyclable, then you're doing your part,” Meyers said.
