What Goes In The Blue Recycling Bin?

The blue recycling bin is very common and can easily be found down the streets when you visit your street, go for putting some trash or pass by a public place. But what goes in the blue recycling bin is still a concern for you. Because even despite the usage of these blue recycling bins is huge, people still become unsure of finding out what they can actually keep inside a blue bin.

Please keep reading because this article is going to cover everything about a blue recycling bin, and you will get what you were looking for. Let’s get started!

What Does A Blue Recycling Bin Stand For?

A blue bin is highly known like other recycling bins dedicated to keeping your daily recyclables. 

In America, you can find this solid, rigid, and heavy-duty blue recycling bin available to solve your problems related to recyclable organizations. 

A blue bin is coated with blue color and has some instructions written. These instructions are from the government or people responsible for collecting your waste materials. 

You have to follow these instructions to keep the daily recyclables. From recycle bin color codes, a blue bin is just another addition that helps you keep your waste organized, sorted, and available at a specific position. 

But what really goes inside a blue recycling bin? 

We are just here to answer this question. So, don’t skip reading!

What Actually Goes Inside A Blue Recycling Bin?

Deciding what should be kept inside a blue recycling bin is totally decided by the people who are keeping it right there around your place. 

However, you can decide what to keep inside a blue recycling bin if you generally know what really goes inside it. Please have a look!

A blue recycling bin is highly known for its diversity of recyclable material acceptance. It is not entitled to keep only paper or plastic. But a blue bin is there to keep materials including metal, glass, plastic, and paper to make recycling easier. It can keep all the related products of these materials!

However, asking for instructions from the local recyclers before keeping stuff inside a blue bin is always mandatory. 

Because sometimes, you might be instructed to keep any of these materials as either metal or plastic products. 

Besides that, local recyclers or recyclable pickers manage in their own ways in whatever way they like and ask to keep the stuff inside each bin. 

That’s the case with a blue bin. But generally, it can keep all that waste which is highly recyclable and widely accepted for recycling. 

Can You Keep Waste Or Your House Trash Inside A Blue Bin?

No, waste or trash collected from different sources such as your kitchen, room floors, buildings, and other relevant places shall not be a part of the blue recycling bin. 

Because there is another waste bin dedicated to keeping this stuff inside, this is known as a black cart or a black recycling bin. 

You can keep your household waste inside, which ultimately ends up in landfills. 

So, a blue bin is something not really meant to keep that trash from your house. 

Brief Explanation Of The Materials You Can Keep Inside A Blue Recycling Bin:

You know that you can keep a couple of materials inside a blue recycling bin; you should also have an idea of what type of products shall come under each category of the materials. 

Because only then would you be able to make recycling helpful and satisfactory for your recyclable collectors. 

In this case, I have made a list of these products and going to let you know what shall go in a blue recycling bin from each material category. 

According to Recycle Smart, the following are the products in the category of each material you can keep inside a recycling bin. Please have a look!

Glass And Its Products	Metal Products	Paper Products	Plastic Products
Empty, dry, and cleanest glassBottlesContainersJarsJugsSauce containersBroken glass piecesBeer or soda bottlesWine bottlesItems having associated lidsCRV beverage containersAnd all types of recyclable glass	Aluminum cansAluminum foil (clean)Aluminum pie platesCookie sheetsCRV beverage cansFood cans (clean)Pet food cans (clean)Unusable, clean pots and pansTin cans	Books (paperback)Boxes, packages (tape ok) Carbonless paperCardboard (flatten; must fit in cart or see above for extra collections) CatalogsColored and construction paperComputer paperCopy paperDetergent boxesPaper egg cartons (no polystyrene foam; if the eggs have broken, put soiled paper cartons in green organics cart)Envelopes with metal clasps (okay to leave the metal in)Envelopes with plastic windowsGift wrap (non-metallic or glittery)Glossy paperMagazinesMailersNewspapers and insertsPaper bagsPaperboard boxes (cereal & shoe boxes)Shredded paper (in a paper bag or clear plastic bag only to reduce litter)Paper towel and toilet paper tubesPet food bagsPost-itsTelephone booksTissue paper (gift type)	Empty, clean, and dry plastic containers with recycling #1-7Baby wipe containersBleach bottlesBuckets without handlesSolid plastic storage and stacking boxes with lidsCRV beverage containersDetergent bottlesClean food containers (no polystyrene foam)Household cleaning containers (empty)Lids and caps remaining on their associated container (please landfill pump/spray lids) Plastic milk jugs (please landfill plastic-lined paper milk cartons) Plastic bags (put all dry and clean plastic bags in one “pillow” to reduce litter – no loose bags!)Prescription bottles (empty; remove personal information)Salad dressing bottles (empty, clean, and dry)  Shampoo and conditioning bottlesWater bottlesPlastic laundry basketSmall solid plastic toys (no metal, rubber, etc.) – must be put in a landfill. If not, solid plastic

This table states all the products you can keep inside a blue recycling bin in each material category. 

However, you still have to follow or find the local waste collectors’ suggestions in order to make things work in your favor. 

How Is Blue Bin Used For In Hospital?

The best example you can take to find a blue recycling bin is the hospital itself. Yes, we see a lot of blue inside any hospital we visit. 

They are either in small sizes placed inside each patient room or in a giant size where the hospital waste is gathered. 

But what type of waste goes inside a blue recycling bin when used inside a hospital? 

A Blue Recycling bin inside a hospital is placed to keep non-hazardous medical waste inside it. These include pills, antibiotics, and injections used on the patients. 

However, it might be decided by the Hospital officials or govt what to keep inside a blue recycling bin. 

How Does Blue Bin Recycling Work In The United States Of America?

In the United States Of America, understanding the Blue Bin Recycling process is very simple. 

If you pick up your phone and call 311, you will know everything related to everything you have or what you should do to make blue bin recycling possible. 

Besides, you can look at recycling now to find a nearby recycling center that will tell you how this works. But in any case, recycling for a blue bin is followed by a total of 3 steps. 

These steps are described as follows.

Collection Of Recyclables:

In the first step, you perform your duties as a senior citizen and keep collecting all the recyclable materials inside a blue recycling bin you are asked to collect. 

Once it’s full, you go for the next step. 

Calling Out The Recyclable Pickers:

Either it’s gonna be a recycle day, or you have to call your local recyclable collectors to collect these gathered materials from your doorstep. 

Depending on the situation, a Van visits your hometown. He empties that blue recycling bin so that you can use it again. 

At that point, you might earn some cash if these recyclables are valuable to them, and they really offer bucks for having these recyclables. 

Or you can do this by yourself. Just look for the nearby recycling center and drop that blue recycling bin materials there. Both situations can earn some cash. 

Recycling Process At Recycling Centers:

Now, once the blue recycling bins products are at a nearby recycling center, your job is done. The next cycle starts here, where these companies sort and organize these materials.

They do this to make recycling effective and efficient. 

When these materials get sorted and organized in their categories, they are sent to their most relevant recycling units. 

There, these products or materials are converted into raw materials. Such raw material can further be used to make some new products or similar products. 

Therefore, there is nothing hard to understand about recycling and how it really works when it comes to an understanding the blue bin recycling process. 

Final Thoughts:

At this point, I can fully understand that you have read all about blue bin recycling and completely know what goes in the blue recycling bin. Its blue color is always an indication of an extensive quantity of recycling materials and recyclables. So, you can keep everything you think can be converted and used once again. This could be anything made of metal, plastic, or paper. But if you have anything on your mind that you really want to ask, please let me know in the comment box. 

However, thanks for being here and visiting. Keep visiting and grabbing more information. Have a lovely day!

References:

• Recycle Smart. (2016). Houses: Recycling (Blue) Cart. [online] Available at: https://www.recyclesmart.org/houses/blue-cart [Accessed 13 Aug. 2022].

• ‌ Rogoff, M.J. and Ross, D.E., 2016. The future of recycling in the United States. Waste Management & Research, 34(3), pp.181-183.
• Ioannou, T., Zampetakis, L.A. and Lasaridi, K., 2013. Psychological determinants of household recycling intention in the context of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, 22(7), pp.2035-2041.