Your Essential Guide to Smarter Recycling

Helping you make informed decisions about recycling and waste reduction with clear, actionable guidance.

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Why Recycle?

Recycling is more than just sorting your trash—it’s a critical step in reducing pollution, conserving natural resources, and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. By recycling, you’re actively contributing to a healthier planet. Our mission is to make recycling easy and accessible for everyone by breaking down the process and providing reliable information.

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our beliefs

We’re passionate about protecting our environment.

About Us

Our goal with The Recycle Guide is to provide you with relevant, accurate, and unbiased information about recycling. We believe that at the core of recycling is an individual’s choice. Your daily choice to reduce waste, reuse various materials, and recycle items instead of throwing them in landfills is what makes recycling programs work. Let’s get started learning and working together!

A pile of used cell phones ready for electronics recycling
  • We are committed to helping you understand how to recycle your electronics safely and efficiently, preserving the environment while making the most out of these materials.
Electronic Recycling

Responsible Disposal of Your Old Electronics

As technology evolves, the lifespan of electronic devices shortens, leading to an ever-growing need for responsible disposal. Electronic waste, or e-waste, contains valuable materials as well as harmful substances that need to be handled properly.

  • Computers & Laptops
  • Mobile Phones & Tablets
  • Televisions
  • Printers & Scanners
  • And more!
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Free mail-in recycling

The Recycle Guide accepts a short list of items for free mail-in recycling: stainless steel cups and tumblers (Yeti, Stanley, and similar brands), cell phones, tablets, and laptops. Ship them to:

16144 N. Main St
Jacksonville, FL 32218

You pay the postage. No form or sign-up is needed — just pack the items and ship them to that address.

  1. For cups and tumblers: empty them, and remove lids, straws, and silicone sleeves if they come off easily.
  2. For phones, tablets, and laptops: back up files you still need, sign out of accounts, remove SIM and SD cards, then perform a factory reset.
  3. Pack everything in a sturdy box so items cannot shift or turn on in transit. Leave batteries installed in devices.
  4. Do not mail swollen, leaking, recalled, or otherwise damaged batteries, or a device with a damaged battery. Take those to a local battery drop-off instead.

Lithium batteries in used electronics have special mailing rules. Before you ship a device, read U.S. Postal Service Publication 52, section 349, or ask a postal clerk. More about cups is on Stainless Steel Cups. Device preparation is on Electronic Recycling.

What Can You Recycle?

  • Illustration representing asbestos material

    Asbestos

  • Illustration of household batteries

    Recycling batteries

  • Illustration of a hoodie representing clothing and textile recycling

    Clothes

  • Illustration of leaves representing compost and organics

    Composting Organics

  • Illustration of a desktop computer

    Recycling computers and electronics

  • Illustration of a concrete slab

    Concrete

  • Illustration of lumber representing construction and wood recycling

    Construction Materials

  • Illustration of a sheet of drywall

    Drywall

  • Illustration of a couch representing furniture recycling

    Furniture

  • Illustration of a glass bottle

    Recycling glass

  • Illustration representing medical sharps; do not place sharps in recycling

    Medical Waste

  • Illustration of a hammer representing scrap metal

    Recycling metals

  • Illustration of currency representing worn-out money recycling

    Money

  • Illustration of a paint can

    Paint & Oil

  • Illustration of stacked newspapers

    Recycling paper and cardboard

  • Illustration of a plastic bottle

    Recycling plastics

  • Illustration of a printer

    Printer & Ink Cartridges

  • Illustration of roof shingles

    Shingles

  • Illustration of a satellite representing space debris

    Space Waste

  • Illustration of a stainless steel tumbler with a recycling symbol

    Stainless Steel Cups

  • Illustration of a vehicle tire

    Tires

  • Illustration of a car representing vehicle recycling

    Vehicles

  • Illustration of lumber representing construction and wood recycling

    Wood

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The Recycle Guide is a free recycling-education site. It explains how to reduce waste, reuse what you can, and recycle everyday materials without the sales pitch. Pages are written from official sources such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and from local program rules, which always come first. The guide was inspired by John D. Arwood.

Recycling turns clean paper, metal, glass, and some plastics into raw material instead of sending them to a landfill. It is not a substitute for reducing and reusing, and a contaminated cart can still be rejected. Used well, it conserves material, keeps certain hazardous items out of ordinary trash, and supports the local program you already pay for. See Why Recycle? for the latest EPA national figures (calendar year 2018, the most recent national Facts and Figures).

The Recycle Guide does not operate a curbside route. It explains how to recycle electronics and offers a free mail-in option for cell phones, tablets, and laptops (you pay postage; no form is needed). Other devices — computers, monitors, printers, TVs, small appliances, and similar items — belong at a certified electronics recycler, a retailer take-back, a municipal e-waste event, or a household hazardous waste site. Do not put electronics or batteries in a trash or recycling cart. See Electronic Recycling and the Locations search.

Back up what you still need, sign out of accounts, remove the SIM and memory cards, and perform a factory reset. You can mail phones and tablets for free recycling to 16144 N. Main St, Jacksonville, FL 32218. You pay the postage, and no form is needed. Pack the device so it cannot turn on in transit, and leave the battery in place unless it is damaged. You can also use a retailer drop-off, a municipal collection, or the Locations search. If a battery is swollen, leaking, or damaged, do not mail it; take it to a battery drop-off instead.

Yes. Laptops can be mailed to the same Jacksonville address as phones and tablets, or taken to a certified electronics recycler or retailer program. Wipe the drive or perform a factory reset before you send it. Older devices such as pagers, feature phones, and e-readers also belong in an electronics collection, not in the curbside bin. See Electronic Recycling for preparation steps and USPS mailing rules for devices that still contain lithium batteries.

Stainless steel cups and tumblers (Yeti, Stanley, and similar brands), cell phones, tablets, and laptops. Pack them securely and ship them to 16144 N. Main St, Jacksonville, FL 32218. You pay the postage, and no form or sign-up is needed. This is not a pickup service, and other items are not listed as accepted for mail-in. Loose or damaged lithium batteries should not be mailed; use a local battery drop-off.

Start with your city or county solid-waste website, or the hauler list for your address. For electronics, use the Recycle Guide Locations search. Earth911’s recycling search is a national directory for many other materials. Retailers and household hazardous waste programs often take batteries, paint, and devices that do not belong in the cart.

The Recycle Guide is inspired by John D. Arwood, who also leads Arwood Site Services, a Jacksonville, Florida, company with over 30 years in the waste and demolition industry. The site itself is a free education project, not a catalog of dumpsters or roll-off service.

Yes. The guide supports Waste and Recycling Workers Week, a 501(c)(3) organization founded and personally funded by John D. Arwood to recognize the people who collect and process waste and recyclables. Learn more at wasterecyclingworkersweek.org.

Back up files, sign out of accounts, and factory-reset phones, tablets, and laptops. Remove memory cards. Leave installed batteries in place unless the manufacturer says otherwise, and never put loose lithium batteries in a trash or recycling cart. If a battery is swollen or damaged, take the device to a local battery or household hazardous waste drop-off; do not mail it. More detail is on the Electronic Recycling page.

The materials grid on this page links to guides for paper, plastic, glass, metal, batteries, organics, and harder-to-recycle items. Recyclable Materials is the full list. Most households should start with the local accepted-materials list, then use those guides when an item is unclear. Stainless steel cups have their own page and can be mailed in with phones, tablets, and laptops.

No. Those numbers are resin identification codes under ASTM D7611. They tell you the plastic type, not whether your hauler accepts the item. Many programs take clean #1 bottles and #2 jugs; other numbers vary widely. The FTC’s Green Guides warn that a conspicuous chasing-arrows symbol can be read as a recyclable claim. Check your local list, and see What Do Plastic Recycling Symbols Mean?

Visit the Sponsors page for current tiers, or use the form on the Contact page. The Recycle Guide will follow up about education and sponsorship, not about renting equipment.

Electronics contain recoverable metals and plastics, and they can also contain hazardous components that do not belong in a landfill or a recycling truck. Responsible recycling recovers material and keeps those components in a controlled process. It only works when devices go to an electronics program — or, for phones, tablets, and laptops, the mail-in address above — instead of the cart.

The Recycle Guide itself is free to use. For mail-in cups, phones, tablets, and laptops, you pay the postage to 16144 N. Main St, Jacksonville, FL 32218; there is no form and no extra fee from the guide. Local drop-offs, retailers, and municipal events set their own rules and fees, which can vary by item (televisions are a common example). Check before you go.

At a responsible electronics recycler, devices are typically tested, and those that cannot be reused are dismantled so metals, plastics, and other fractions can be recovered and hazardous parts can be managed separately. The Recycle Guide’s mail-in option is a way to get accepted devices into that kind of process. It is not a data-destruction certificate by itself, which is why a factory reset still matters before you ship or drop off a phone, tablet, or laptop.