Recycling Guidelines

Single-family residents can put out extra recycling at no additional cost.

• Place extra household recyclables next to your cart in a paper bag, cardboard box, or reusable container labeled "Recycling".
• Extra cardboard boxes that won't fit in your cart can be flattened and placed next to your cart.
  

• Pieces must be smaller than 3x3x3' so please cut it down if any side is longer than 3 feet.
• Please don't leave extra cardboard or paper out in the rain overnight - soggy cardboard is not able to be recycled.

Apartments and condos can add more recycling capacity for no additional cost.

If you live in an apartment or condo, we can increase your service levels for no cost if you often find that your recycling carts or dumpsters are overflowing. If there's room, we can upsize your dumpster or add more carts, and if not, we may be able to pick up your recycling more often. Simply email us your request with your property name and address.

Free resources, signage, and assistance are available for multifamily property managers.

Businesses can have recycling up to 150% of your trash container for no additional cost.

Contact us to see whether your business qualifies for additional no-cost recycling.

Free resources, signage, and assistance are available for businesses.

Basic recyclables (cardboard, paper, bottles, and cans) can be recycled for free at King County's Houghton Transfer Station in the Bridle Trails neighborhood of Kirkland. Follow their guidelines, which may be different than Kirkland's.

• Recycle to save money. By putting recyclables in your blue cart or dumpster, you generate less trash. With less trash, you can opt for a smaller (and cheaper) garbage service level.
• Recycling makes better use of materials because items are made into new things instead of sitting unused in the landfill for a lifetime. There are finite resources on the planet, so it makes sense to put them to good use. Recycling is part of a circular economy that reduces waste.
• Our landfill is on pace to fill up in ten years, and once it's full we'll need to either ship our waste somewhere else or build a waste-to-energy facility that harvests energy from burning garbage. These options will likely cost more than using our current landfill, which would make your rates increase. There may be environmental justice considerations to transporting waste to other communities, and material that is burned would never be able to be recovered.
• Recycling helps the environment. Making recycled materials uses less energy and produces less greenhouse gases, which impact our climate. When items are made with recycled materials, then fewer natural resources need to be mined or extracted from the planet. Mining and logging can pollute water, damage wildlife habitat, and contribute to climate change.
• We need everyone's help to meet our community's waste reduction and recycling goals. Recycling and reducing how much waste we make contributes to the green, vibrant future that our community envisions.

Yes, the recycling you put in your blue cart or dumpster is getting recycled.

You might have heard news stories or rumors that our recycling system is failing. A few years ago, China implemented a new policy to reduce the amount of dirty recycling imported from the US and Europe. The new cleanliness standards are challenging to meet in a system that collects materials in one "commingled" cart, since the sorting machinery is not 100% accurate. Since then, our hauler Waste Management has located new markets domestically and in North America for the recycled material coming from Kirkland.

Recyclables go to the Cascade Recycling Center in Woodinville where they are sorted and eventually sold to be made into new products. This facility influences what's accepted in your recycling cart at home, because anything that goes in your blue cart needs to be able to be sorted here.

Cascade Recycling Center is a cacophonous maze of efficiency that separates materials so they can be sold and turned into new goods. Recyclables are sorted by a variety of machines plus an astonishing number of people who manually pick out what the machines missed. Spinning wheels float cardboard and newspapers above the stream. Suction conveyor belts separate paper from plastic bottles. Optical sorters identify bottles and cans mixed with paper. Magnets pull out steel, while an eddy current separates aluminum cans from plastic bottles.

Wasting less food, and composting uneaten food, are just as important as recycling. If you aren't composting your food scraps yet, it's an easy and cheap way to lower your household's climate impact.

While recycling is a great way to keep materials in use as long as possible, reusing what already exists and reducing how much waste you make is even better! Check out our reuse and waste reduction ideas for ways to waste less food, celebrate holidays with less waste, and more.

Why not everything is recyclable

Unfortunately, not everything is recyclable. The recycling system is based on economic markets. That means that businesses need to be willing to buy the used material to turn into new products. Some items aren't recyclable because:

• they cannot be sorted in our facilities,
• they're made of mixed materials that can't be separated, or
• there isn't a viable market to buy and use the material to manufacture new products. 

Recycling only the things we accept in your carts is one of the most important things you can do to help the recycling system.

More ways to support a better recycling system

• Support legislation at the state level that raises recycled content standards, implements producer stewardship and extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs, and limits the use of hard-to-recycle items like Styrofoam^TM
• Buy products made with post-consumer recycled content to support the market for recycled material

We're here to help! We can increase service levels so you have more space to put recycling. We can provide resources like posters and tools to help residents recycle better. We also offer resident education.

See our multifamily recycling toolkit and request assistance

If your driver sees plastic bags or other items we don't accept in your recycling cart, they may not collect your recycling. They will leave you an "Oops" tag on your cart explaining the problem. 

After removing the plastic bags or incorrect items, you can put the recycling out on your next pickup day. If you have too much recycling to fit in your cart after missing a week of pickup, you can put out extra for free. Put out extra recycling in your own can or a cardboard box labeled "recycling" so the right driver gets it.

Learn more about single family curbside collection service, multifamily service, and business collection service.

Curbside waste collection rates are based on your garbage service level. Find out what the current rates are.