You Toss it In. We'll Sort it Out.
We remain committed to making recycling and disposal easy for all our residents in western Placer County. Even though you have one waste bin, you are still recycling and composting. In Placer County, all of the residential trash, recyclables, and food waste can be placed in your one waste bin together!
Don’t worry; the Materials Recovery Facility will help sort out the recyclables and ensure that everything that can be recycled has the opportunity to reach its highest potential.
What Goes in Your Garbage Bin?
Toss trash, recycling, and food waste into your garbage bin.
We often call it the “One Big Bin” because you can toss all of your regular trash (including commonly recycled items) into your garbage bin and not have to worry about whether something is or isn’t recyclable. The only things you must keep out of your One Big Bin are Household Hazardous Waste items because they could cause damage to our environment or our facilities.
We believe in sustainably managing recycling and disposal for our residents because we want to keep Placer beautiful for generations to come.
What DOESN’T go in the bins?
A few things don’t go in your garbage or green waste bins. For this list of items to keep out of these bins, visit our KEEP IT OUT PAGE.
For what can go in your bin, see below.
It takes 10 recycled water bottles to make enough plastic fiber to make a new t-shirt.
It takes 14 recycled water bottles to create enough fiberfill insulation for a ski jacket.
It takes 114 recycled water bottles to make enough fiberfill insulation for a sleeping bag.
Whether it is a plastic beverage bottle, a broken storage container, or that never-ending plastic packaging you had to cut through to get to the tiny little product in the middle – toss it in your bin and we will make sure it gets recycled.
Glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled endlessly without a loss of quality or purity.
In 2017, 39.1% of beer and soft drink bottles were recovered for recycling, according to the US EPA.
Over 1 ton of natural resources are saved for every ton of glass recycled.
So go ahead and toss in all of your glass bottles.
90% of products are shipped in cardboard containers.
On average, a typical household will throw away up to 13,000 pieces of cardboard a year.
In the US, 850 million tons of paper and cardboard — the equivalent of 1 billion trees — are thrown away each year.
The good news is that recycling old cardboard into new cardboard takes only 75% of the energy needed to manufacture new cardboard. You are helping save trees when you toss in your cardboard.
Recycling one aluminum can save enough energy to listen to a full album on your phone.
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a computer for three hours.
Aluminum is the most valuable recyclable material; however, the US throws away nearly $1 billion worth of aluminum cans each year. Not in Placer County – throwing your aluminum cans in your One Big Bin means you are making sure they get recycled. So please go ahead and toss them in.
Standard trash will go through the sorters and into the landfill if that is where it belongs. Examples of trash that cannot be recycled, composted, or otherwise repurposed include:
- Styrofoam
- Chip and snack bags
- Plastic wrappers
No need to separate them – you can throw all of this in your bin, and we’ll make sure it ends up properly disposed of in the landfill where it belongs, after all the recyclable materials have been recovered.
The Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) is being upgraded to sort out your Food Scraps at our facility for recycling, so go ahead and toss them in!
Food Scraps Include:
- Coffee grounds
- Veggie ends and peelings
- Fruits
- Bread
- Cooked and uncooked pasta
- Eggshells
- Meat and fish bones
- Spoiled food
Learn more about the advancements coming to the WPWMA here.
Now that you are clear on what goes in, be sure to learn more about what stays out! Check our Keep it Out page for information on the types of waste that should not be put in your bin.
Need more information about who your waste hauler is? Visit the They Collect page and click on the area where you live to learn more about the services provided.
Placer County Organics and SB 1383
In western Placer County, we remain committed to making recycling and disposal easy for our residents – this goes for organic recycling, too!
Each jurisdiction in Placer County is responsible for collecting organics for recycling, and currently, all jurisdictions ask you to toss food scraps directly into your garbage bin, not your green waste container, because of improvements being made at the WPWMA’s Materials Recovery Facility to divert food scraps (and other organic materials like soiled paper products and cardboard) from your garbage so it doesn’t end up in the landfill.
Learn more about SB 1383 and the advancements at the WPWMA’s Materials Recovery Facility turning your food scraps into compost here.
What Can Go In your Garbage Bin
Here is a fun way to see a few things that are safe to go in the bin. Please also review what doesn’t go in the bin.
What goes in your Green/Yard Waste Bin?
What can Placer County residents put in their green/yard waste bin?
Yard clippings, plant trimmings, leaves, weeds, and other plant materials are fine to place in your green/yard waste bin. These organic materials are taken to our facility where they are recycled and made into compost used to enrich soil instead of going to the landfill.
What not to put in your green/yard waste bin.
Be sure to avoid putting non-plant items like plastic bags, pots, glass, garbage, animal feces, or metal in the green/yard waste bin. These items should go only into your garbage bin. This supports our recycling and composting, and it helps keep our community beautiful and sustainable now and for future generations.
