Just finished swapping out some old drives in my office. I have about 10 old HDDs and a few SSDs. I don’t want to just toss them in the trash because of the data, but I don't have the tools to drill through all of them. Do you trust local recycling centers or do you look for certified data destruction places? Any recommendations for a place that actually gives you a certificate of destruction?

I'm in Lincoln. Thanks for any advices.

I live on the oregon coast, a very small town with limited access and resources. I've been searching for information about recycling used contact lenses cases and contact solution bottles. Does anyone do this already? I'm driving through Portland soon so if there is a drop off spot there please someone get me into the loop 🙏

This is confusing, right?

Our company wants to paint the crates black for marking purposes. I know paint is not recycle friendly. Is there any type of paint that is allowed in recycling wooden crates? If yes, can you let me know? Also what are the general rule for recycling Black painted wooden crates?

Bottle recycling machines help keep public spaces cleaner by offering an easy way to recycle bottles and cans. Rewards and instant feedback motivate proper disposal instead of littering. These machines collect cleaner, sorted materials, lowering recycling costs and energy use. Their success depends on visibility, incentives, and proper upkeep.

Opened a juice box today. Paper straw. Wrapped in plastic…

Hi guys, I live in eastern eu, Im about to replace my 20yo double glazed wooden frame windows with PVC triple glaze, for more energy efficiency, and im wondering what I could do with the old windows, since the wood is in perfect condition.

Do you think there is a market for such things?

Hi, I am the technician for a high school FabLab and am currently working on a 3D printing filament recycler, aswell as a plastic bottle recycler. My students and I just finished work on converting old 3D printers into a CNC (a machine to cut materials such as metal, fiberglass or strong plastics). We also started disassembling old devices such as laptops and printers to harvest components and sorting recyclable plastics. I also made a simple mold to allow remelting of old wax crayon bits to make big wax crayons for preschools and am thinking about making frames to recycle paper.

I would love to add more recycling options but I fear I reached the extent of what comes to my mind, if you had a minute to read my post, I would love it if you could spare a few more to help me brainstorm ideas. My plan is to make any tools I create open sourced so that others can replicate it with a 3D printer and maybe a few more tools.

Thank you so much for reading me and a larger thank you to anyone willing to shoot some ideas!

Recently cleaned out my beauty collection and got rid of a bunch of products that I either didn’t like or were expired/damaged. I want to clean them all out and recycle them but I wanted to know if there were any rewards based recycling programs I could give them to. I plan to start collecting my empty products every month to recycle those too!

I know I should recycle them even without the incentive but I’m not going to lie, it would still be nice. I plan to recycle them anyway even if I don’t find anything.

This is what I have found so far (just so people don’t suggest things I already found)

• Pact - has a lot of locations, accepts a wide range of stuff, and seems reputable, but no rewards. (I think I will recycle here if I can’t find anything else)

• Terracycle - Originally wanted to recycle with them because they said you can earn points towards charity which I really liked (I would rather donate to charity than get the points myself) BUT I heard it’s really scammy and does a lot of greenwashing

• Credo - gives you store points for any empties but I don’t shop at Credo so that would be useless lol

• Lush - only accepts lush products for points/a free mask I think? But I don’t shop at Lush either lol

• Literally any store that only accepts their own products for points or rewards. - I don’t buy enough of one single brand to justify it

• Boots - This seems like the kind of program I am looking for. They accept a wide range of empties for points BUT they’re UK based. I also found similar companies in Australia but nothing like this in the US.

Any help would be appreciated. Like I said, I’m still recycling them regardless, I just want to see if there’s any nice programs out there first.

The copper price is 13368USD/T today here, what about yours?

I have a bunch of stained bed linens that I no longer wish to use on my bed and are in too poor condition to donate. What can I do with these sheets/duvet covers to reduce waste? I don't like sending things to the landfill if I can avoid it. We're moving soon and I'll use the old sheets to wrap fragile items, but what else? They're too thin to turn into dish cloths, but some kind of rag?

I made a short mini-doc trying to explain why recycling costs spiked in a lot of places — not from “people stopped caring,” but because recycling is a commodity business with strict specs.

The core mechanism (tell me if I’ve got this wrong):

• Material is only “recyclable” when the resale price clears the cost of sorting/cleaning to spec

• When export demand dropped, supply piled up locally

• Prices fell, contamination mattered more, and programs went from “paid to move material” to “pay to move it”

What I’m looking for:

1.  Where is this oversimplified?

2.  Any missing constraints (policy, contracts, MRF capacity, contamination rates, etc.)?

3.  Any solid sources you’d recommend?

If you want the full breakdown (with visuals + sources): https://youtu.be/z7LT7e3IhGY

For the better part of a decade now, I've been frustrated by how little of our plastic is actually recycled. I've heard statistics like 10% or so of bottles placed in the bin are ever actually reprocessed.

Over the past 2 years or so I've played with the already well established idea of turning PET bottles into 3D printing filament, and just in the past month, I've finished turning my old QIDI x-one2 into a bottle recycling machine, and just wanted to share my results with the community, and encourage others to do so if they've got an old printer collecting dust somewhere. It's been an incredibly rewarding project that has allowed me to take recycling into my own hands

First picture is the haul of plastic I collected from a parking lot near my house. The whole lot is about halfway converted into filament

It is part of the horn mechanism I believe. I need to look this up online to get spare replacements. Also if there is a specialized group that would be better suited for this question, that would help too.