Kitchen Trash & Recycling

Recycling is one of the easiest ways for people to go green. Communities across the country have either curbside pick-up service or drop-off service for people to recycle their waste. Kitchen trash like food containers and leftover food can be recycled or composted for environmentally friendly reuse.

Curbside and Drop-Off Recycling

• Special containers are used for recyclable materials.

  Community recycling programs are the best way to recycle kitchen trash. Eighty-seven percent of Americans have access to a community recycling program.
  With curbside recycling programs, residents separate recyclable waste from their garbage and put it in special bins or containers to be picked up. Drop-off programs require residents to take the material to designated recycling locations.

Materials Commonly Recycled

• Aluminum cans are widely recycled

  Kitchen trash materials picked up for recycling vary by community, but most include containers made from aluminum, steel, paper, plastic and glass. Some communities may include corrugated cardboard and box board.

Food Recycling and Composting

• In addition to food containers, some communities, such as Seattle, have instituted food recycling. Food waste is put into a separate bins and composted. In communities without food waste recycling, residents can choose to put the food waste in backyard compost bins.

Types of Recycling Streams

• Dual-stream recycling requires multiple bins

  Communities with dual-stream recycling require separating paper waste from container waste. Food containers go into one bin, while newspapers and magazines go into another. Single-stream recycling allows all items to be placed into one bin; the items are separated at the recycling facility.

Value of Recycling Kitchen Trash

• Recycling kitchen trash provides environmental and economic benefits. Materials recovered from kitchen trash are cheaper to recycle and use less energy than raw materials. For every 10,000 tons of recycled waste, 36 jobs are created, compared to only six for landfill waste, according to Earth911.com.

  Many cities use the "pay-as-you-throw" model of recycling funding. Residents have recycled picked up for free or a low set fee, but they must pay a fee for each trash bag they use. This makes it cheaper to recycle kitchen trash than to throw it out.