Recycling Made Easy

The Placitas Recycling Center is operated by a community-based nonprofit organization, not by a government entity, and is completely staffed by volunteers. The volunteers depend on help from the community to continue providing this service that is so important to the health of the environment. As a private operation, the Center can only accept items for which there is a recycling market. The Placitas Recycling Association is constantly looking for new markets that enable it to expand the materials accepted for recycling.

Following are a few tips that will make your recycling experience go more smoothly and help the volunteers at the Center manage the materials better:

• Make sure the materials you bring are accepted by the Center and in the appropriate condition. For a list of items the Center can and cannot accept, click here.
• Unlike recycling centers in some other communities, the Placitas Recycling Center has no ability to separate materials and depends on users to bring in the materials already segregated. Please take the time to sort your materials correctly.
• One of the biggest challenges the center faces, especially in the summer, is keeping vermin out. You can help by rinsing out cans and plastic bottles. And please, no pizza containers or food-stained cardboard boxes! • Please break down and flatten cardboard boxes.
• Advertisement slicks and inserts that come in newspapers do not need to be removed. What comes with the paper stays with the paper.
• There are three trailers for paper at the Center. One is for newspaper. The second is for mixed paper, which includes almost anything except phone books, egg cartons, paper towels, napkins, tissues, waxed paper, and stickers. The third is for white and light-colored office paper and shredded office paper • Only white and pastel shredded office paper should be placed in the office paper trailer. Other types of shredded paper should be placed in the mixed paper trailer. • The only metal the center can accept is aluminum, including cans, containers, and foil, but not aerosol cans. Again, please rinse off any food.
• Only plastic that is marked as #1 or #2 is accepted. All #1 plastic, regardless of color, can be placed in one trailer. Number 2 plastics need to be separated into the milky- white, translucent containers, which go in one trailer, and other #2 opaque and colored containers, which go in a separate trailer. Please remove the tops from plastic bottles.
• Plastic bags are generally not accepted at the Center. Occasionally, the Placitas Elementary School will run a campaign to collect plastic bags. Those events will be publicized at the Center.
• The Center only accepts rechargeable batteries, no lead or acid batteries.
• Other items that can be recycled at the Center include ink-jet cartridges and polystyrene packing peanuts double-bagged and tied off securely. The Center does not accept laser printer cartridges or block polystyrene packing material.
• The Center is still not able to accept glass.

Fliers with a more detailed list of the materials that are and are not accepted are also available at the Placitas Recycling Center.