"Wasting Less, Made Easy": Ridwell Recycling Program

The Local 600 Sustainability Committee is excited to have learned about Ridwell, an organization collecting hard to recycle items like plastic film, textiles, shoes, batteries, and lightbulbs across the country. For a monthly subscription, you can collect the approved items, and then Ridwell picks up your box every other week. There are even add-ons like multi-layer plastic (i.e. food storage bags, pet food bags, and frozen food bags), Styrofoam, and fluorescent light tubes. You receive a bin for your home that is 14x14x14’’ to collect the items, and then you are given reusable bags to bag everything up before the Ridewell collection pick up date.

Local 600 Camera Operator Woo Lovinger has signed up with Ridwell. “Between my compost, city recycling, and Ridwell’s multi-layer plastic (i.e. chip bags and veggie bags) and plastic film (i.e. plastic bags and bubble wrap), I only have a tiny bag of trash ever few weeks. It’s pretty awesome.”

Once collected, Ridwell works with local, regional, and national partners to divert as much as possible from the landfills. For instance, Ridwell partners with Trex to turn plastic film and wrap into new decking material. Merlin, First Star, Hydroblox, and ByFusion recycle multi-layer plastic into building and drainage materials. Goodwill works to reuse or recycle the clothing. Clean Earth uses safe recycling techniques to handle the lightbulbs. Call2Recycle uses mechanical recycling techniques to recover material to create new batteries from the old ones.

At the end of the day, recycling is business, and there are a ton of city specific rules. For instance, in Burbank, a bottle cap made with a different material from its bottle cannot be recycled together. For instance, a glass bottle with an aluminum cap cannot be sorted together, they are separate materials, so the cap must be removed but it’s too small to be sorted on the machines – and therefore it is not recycled. Ridwell has a program where plastic caps can be collected separately for recycling on their own, which is really awesome for items that would otherwise end up in the landfill.

“I use all my stuff until it is unusable, so having a place to truly recycle and not just a place that donates is perfect for me,” says Lovinger.

Unfortunately, up to 25% of materials that are put into recycling bins end up in landfills, so it is imperative we work toward building a future without waste. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – in that order. First we must work on stopping waste creation, then work towards materials circularity opportunities, and finally if it gets to the point of needing disposal, we need to properly handle recycling of these items. Partnering with organizations like Ridwell is one way for us to work toward a more sustainable future.