Recycling in Asheville and Buncombe County Made Easy. Well, Easier…

Recycling…Can Be Confusing!

The image shows acceptable and not acceptable items for curbside recycling in Buncombe County.Especially those pesky plastics. But help is available!

Here in the City of Asheville and in Buncombe County the guidelines are the same, regardless of who picks up your recycling. So the quickstart version of this message is that you can just check out the image above, or go to https://bit.ly/BCRecycGuide to see the do’s and don’t’s. Speaking of don’t’s, don’t miss the bits about the landfill since you can take certain things there that you can’t recycle curbside. 

If you want to dig a little deeper, these two articles from the Citizen-Times provide more background info, plus good detailed tips on how to handle some items like metal bottle caps and prescription medication containers:

https://bit.ly/RecycACT11Jan23

https://bit.ly/RecycACT22Nov22

Then there is a tool on the City of Asheville’s website that will help you determine how to recycle or dispose of specific items. It’s called the Waste Wizard Tool, and you can find it here: https://bit.ly/AVLWstWiz. Once there, click on the Wizard button and then enter the name of the item in question, e.g., “Television.”

Finally, Asheville GreenWorks is a great organization that you can check out at https://bit.ly/AVLGrnWrks. One of their programs is called “Hard 2 Recycle,” which, as the name implies, provides a means to deal with stuff – e.g., styrofoam – that can’t go into the curbside system. You can learn more about this program at https://bit.ly/GrnWrksHTR.

OK, and when you’ve read all you want to read – somebody please tell us what we’re supposed to do with those clear plastic food clamshells, which nobody seems to want to accept these days.