Recycling is a three-step process: Collecting clean recyclable materials from homes and businesses; Remanufacturing the recyclables into new products; and Purchasing recycled products. All three steps are required for recycling to be successful. Watch a video** about the recycling process in the District. When you finish drinking a beverage from a plastic bottle you simply drop the bottle into your recycling cart or bin along with newspapers, office paper, metal cans and other plastic bottles. You don’t need to bag or sort the recyclables. Then, on your collection day, set out your full recycling container. Where do the recyclables go next?

DPW crews pick up the recyclable materials from your bin or cart, dump them all into a collection truck and take them to a specially-designed Materials Recovery Facility or MRF (pronounced “MERF”). At the MRF, recyclable items or materials are sorted by type, baled, and loaded onto tractor-trailer trucks to go to factories or mills in order to be remanufactured.

By purchasing items with recycled content, you encourage manufacturers to use your recycled materials in their processes. This provides a market for your aluminum, tin, glass, plastic and paper and creates a 'closed system' where raw materials are needed in fewer quantities and your used, recyclable materials are in demand.

Many useful everyday items can be made from recyclable material:

• Plastic bottles can be made into clothes including fleeces, hats and T-shirts, refuse sacks, and window frames.
• Paper and cardboard can be made into newspapers, toilet paper, notepads and cards.
• Steel, tin and aluminum cans can be made into new cans or used to make parts of airplanes, appliances and cars.
• Glass is normally remanufactured into new bottles and jars and put back onto the supermarket shelf.
• Textiles can be turned into filling for toys and pillows or they might be shipped to developing countries.