Plastic Bag Food Packaging
- DON’T put them in curbside recycling
- DO drop polyethylene plastic wrap off at local drop-off locations
- DON’T recycle certain clear plastic wraps that aren’t pure polyethylene
About These Items
A lot of grocery products come in disposable plastic bags, from breads to cereals to frozen foods to fresh salads. These bags can not be recycled through the city’s curbside program.
Some of these bags can be dropped off at a plastic film recycling center. This includes newspaper and bread bags, dry cleaning bags, produce bags, and the outer wrappings of paper towels, napkins, diapers, tissue boxes and toilet paper. As long as a bag is standard polyethylene film with no special layers or treatments, it can be deposited in the bins for recycling shopping bags at most grocery stores. (see below)
Drop them off at dedicated local locations.
There are some local locations where you can drop off many kinds of plastic bags and other flexible film plastics. The Plastic Film Recycling.org site keeps an up-to-date list that is searchable by zip code. These locations accept items such as newspaper bags, bread bags, dry cleaning bags, thin produce bags, and the outer wrappings of paper towels, napkins, diapers, tissue boxes and toilet paper. As long as a bag is standard polyethylene film (look for a recycling logo with resin codes 2 or 4 ) , it can be deposited in these bins. You can also check for a How2Recycle label on bags– if it says Store Drop-Off, it can be taken to one of these locations.
(Notably, these collection sites do not accept most pre-washed salad bags, chip bags, plastic pet food bags, or frozen food bags.)
These local chains typically have plastic bag collection bins on site:
- Giant Eagle
- Target
- Lowe’s
- Whole Foods
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