What Can I Recycle?
Blue Recycling Carts
The city provides each residence with a blue recycling cart with a lid to keep material dry and to help control litter. All accepted materials can be placed into a single recycling cart and placed on the curb for once-a-week collection. This cart remains the property of the city.
If you need a new blue recycling cart, call our operations team at (727) 562-4920.
What items are accepted? Remember to "Simplify to 5"!
The following materials can be taken to the city of Clearwater's Recycling Drop-off Center at the Clearwater Solid Waste Complex, 1701 N. Hercules Ave.:
You can help the environment by choosing to recycle, but not everything can be recycled!
Remember to “Simplify to 5” and only recycle these five categories of items:
- All plastic bottles and jugs #1-7 (no Styrofoam, plastic bags or wraps)
- Glass bottles/jars
- Aluminum/steel cans and empty aerosol cans
- Mixed paper. If you can rip it, you can recycle it. This includes newspapers, office paper, magazines, junk mail, phone books, paperback books, cereal/food boxes, envelopes, shoe boxes, wrapping paper and folders. This does not include tissues, paper towels and napkins.
- Flattened cardboard and cartons
What items are not accepted in your recycling cart?
Please remove all recyclables from plastic bags before emptying them into the recycling dumpsters. Plastic bags, films, and wraps cannot be recycled in the city of Clearwater.
Plastic grocery bags, plastic trash bags, tires, scrap metal, electronic, hazardous waste and food scraps are not accepted as recyclables. They should not be included in recycling bins and dumpsters.
Shredded paper should be placed in your compost bin or the trash. It is not accepted in Clearwater's recycling program.
Hazardous waste, electronics, tires and garbage will not be accepted at the Recycling Drop-off Center.
Contaminated Recycling
This contaminated load of recycling was collected Aug. 20, 2024, along Clearwater's residential routes. It and other batches like it were rejected by our recycling processor.
Contaminated Recycling
Our recycling processor rejected 32.3 tons of the recycling we collected from residents, or four percent of our total collections, in August 2024.
Contaminated Recycling
If it's not clean, dry, or loose in your blue recycling bin, then it belongs in the trash.
When in Doubt, Throw It Out!
If you're not sure if an item is recyclable or not, throw it away instead or check the Pinellas County "Where Does It Go?" Search Tool to find the proper ways to recycle or dispose of specific items in your area.
Plastic bags, plastic films and wraps, ropes, Christmas lights, fabric, scrap metal, tires, and electronics cannot be recycled through Clearwater’s curbside recycling program as they damage the equipment in recycling facilities.
Remember to stick to the basics when it comes to recycling. All accepted items should be relatively clean and not in bags to make sure the materials are accepted by our recycling facilities and not diverted to the landfill.
Blue containers are for recycling only, not overflow for trash or yard waste. Trash in the recycling bins contaminates the recycling truck contents.
Recycle Your Cooking Oil
Grease repurposing is available to city residents, making it easy to properly dispose of household and cooking fats, oils and greases that can cause serious, costly sewer problems by creating blockages in pipes.
Grease repurposing is available on a drop-off only basis by appointment. Due to limited resources, there currently is no curbside pick-up of oils for repurposing.
How to Repurpose Your Grease
The container used to collect cooking grease for the city's fats, oils and grease repurposing program has been relocated inside the Clearwater Solid Waste facility. As a result, residents will now need to schedule an appointment before dropping off used cooking oil and grease for recycling.
This change is being made because the container was being used on a regular basis to improperly dispose of hazardous waste, such as automotive fluids including motor oils, which should instead be taken to the Household Hazardous Waste facility or to a countywide drop-off event.
Properly disposing of cooking grease helps protect our sewer system, prevent costly blockages, and keep fats, oils, and grease out of local waterways. Residents are encouraged to continue recycling used cooking oil rather than pouring it down drains or disposing of it in the trash.
To access the container, residents must make an appointment with Clearwater Solid Waste. Appointments are available from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday by calling (727) 562-4920.
Customized Commercial Recycling Programs
The Solid Waste/Recycling department creates a recycling program tailored to each business by sending a supervisor to visit the site and perform an on-site evaluation. The department is proud to offer a variety of recycling dumpster sizes and cart clusters in order to provide service to businesses large and small. Program rates vary depending on container size and frequency of pick-up. In many cases, recycling will result in savings over the solid waste rates.
Cardboard
If businesses choose a recycling program with a cardboard dumpster, nothing but cardboard should be placed in that dumpster. This means no Styrofoam, plastic packaging or plastic bags should be in that dumpster. Clean cardboard is collected and processed separately from mixed recyclables, and the city appreciates all efforts to recycle properly.
Where Does It Go?