Residential Recycling
Recycling is easy and, when done properly, can help to improve the environment. Be sure to use this guide to find out your recycling pickup schedule, learn more about your Smart Cart, and see our simplified recycling guidelines.
Composting is a great way to recycle your yard waste and other plant materials into something useful for your lawn or garden.
Composting 101 and Composting for Beginners (PDF).
View details on what can and cannot be recycled (PDF)
Pickup Schedules
For single family customers living in detached houses, mobile homes, many town homes, duplexes, triplexes and quadruplexes, recycling is picked up once a week, curbside and is the same as your garbage pickup day according to your schedule. Don't know your schedule? Go to YOU Online to look up your schedule by address or account number.
Roll the Smart Cart (and garbage container) to the curb by 6:30 a.m. on your collection day to let pickup crews know your cart is ready for collection. Please leave your cart at least three feet away from obstacles.
Apartment customers primarily use recycling centers for recycling (apartment management determines if there is room for a recycling center on premises). Some small complexes use recycling bins and some may use garbage cans due to space constraints. (see additional information on apartment complexes)
There are several locations to drop off recyclable items:
- City of Tallahassee, Solid Waste Services 2727 Municipal Way Directions: Go west on Pensacola Street to Appleyard Drive. Turn left on Appleyard. Take another immediate left onto Municipal Way. Solid Waste Services is the third building on the right, past the Health Department and Sheriff's Office Turn into the driveway just past the main building's parking lot. The container is just outside the gate to the "truck yard". This container is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- Leon County Solid Waste Management Facility 7550 Apalachee Parkway Directions: Go east on Apalachee Parkway, past the Super Wal-Mart and Mom and Dad's Restaurant. The facilitywill be on the left. Call 606-1823 for hours.
- Sam's Club at 3122 Dick Wilson Blvd.
- The Book Store at St. John's Episcopal Church located at 131 North Calhoun St.
Smart Carts
If you're within the city's Solid Waste service area, you should have a recycling Smart Cart in addition to your garbage collection barrel. If for some reason your home doesn't have one, simply call us at 891-4YOU (4968) and we'll have one delivered to you.
One side of the convenient Smart Cart is for recycling metal, glass and plastic containers: the other is for paper products. Rinse and crush, as far as possible all containers, flatten or cut boxes to fit.
The recycling Smart Cart, which can live right next to your garbage barrel, makes the decision to recycle a trouble free option. Feed it often!
At first glance, the City's collection trucks for your recyclables look like they're picking up your Smart Cart and dumping it all into one bin. In fact, the trucks have a divided bin and are designed to collect two commodities at once from a divided cart. The automated trucks allow one person to perform the entire operation.
| What Can Be Recycled | FEED YOUR SMART CART! |
|---|---|
| Glass-Metal-Plastic All glass, metal and plastic cans, bottles, jars and jugs can be recycled. |
|
| For example: Aluminum cans, glass bottles or jars, milk jugs, soda bottles, water jugs, shampoo bottles, peanut butter jars, detergent bottles and jugs and lotion bottles. Just remove the lids and rinse (not required but can help keep bugs and smells away) and place in your Smart Cart. |
|
| Paper All paper and cardboard not intended for use with wet or greasy food can be recycled. |
|
| For example: Items such as newspapers, magazines, catalogs, junk mail, cereal boxes, detergent boxes, paper bags, and cardboard boxes are all recyclable. Exceptions include: pizza boxes (greasy), paper towels (wet) or drink boxes. |
|
| Recycling Beyond the Cart | |
| Many items that cannot be put in the Smart Cart can be recycled elsewhere. This includes plastic bags, clothes, wire hangers, computers, and more. | |
Contaminants are very costly to the recycling program:
When non-recyclable items are mixed with items that are accepted for recycling
in Tallahassee, they can contaminate an entire load of recyclables. When
it is feasible, these unaccepted items are sorted out at a recycling processor
by hand and then taken to the landfill. However, a contaminated load can
be rejected by the recycling processor as unusable, and the whole load has
to be taken to the landfill.Then, we lose tons of recyclable material due
to a small amount of contamination.
View details on what can and cannot be recycled (PDF)
Additional Information for Apartment Complexes
Each apartment complexes' management decides that either their tenants will be billed for solid waste collection as part of the monthly City utility bill or their monthly rent will include solid waste charges. If each apartment is billed by the City, the monthly charge is $15.91. Ask your manager where to place old furniture and other bulky items, appliances, old bikes, Christmas trees, yard waste, etc. for disposal. These "trash" items, per Florida law, cannot be placed in garbage or recycling containers.