How Much Does a Recycling Pickup Service Cost?

On This Page

You'd be hard pressed to find anybody these days who would dispute the benefits of recycling. But, even though a person favors recycling in theory, in practice it's more difficult to sort paper, plastic, and metals and bring them to the local recycling center. One solution offered by many municipalities is a curbside recycling program. If your city does not offer one, you may alternatively pay a private company for recycling pick up services. Below you'll find more information about recycling services and how much they cost.

Reasons to Use a Recycling Pickup Service #

Inconvenience is one of the main reasons why many people don't recycle. Curbside recycling services encourage people to recycle because they make the process extremely simple. Recyclable materials are simply placed into a bin and rolled out to the curb for collection.

Pickup services lead to more people recycling, which, aside from helping to support more than 1 million American jobs, has numerous benefits for the environment, including:

• Produce less waste: Around 60 percent of items that are thrown away are in fact recyclable.
• Fewer landfills: Plastic can take 1,000 years to decompose; glass can remain in a landfill for up to 4,000 years. By recycling these materials, valuable space can be saved and put to better use.
• Conservation: Paper, plastic, and metals can be used indefinitely if they are recycled. Producing them from raw materials is unnecessary and furthermore, causes harm to the environment through resource consumption and manufacturing emissions.
• Reduce global warming: Recycling just half of your household waste can prevent nearly 2,500 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.
• Protect wildlife: Recycling is beneficial not only for humans, but millions of species of plants and animals that see their habitats destroyed by the harvesting of natural resources and pollution.

Recycling Pick-Up Service Average Costs #

The cost of a recycling pick up service varies from household to household depending on location, an individual company's rates, and specific services rendered (i.e. the amount of waste, frequency of pickups, etc.).

Generally speaking, you can expect to pay approximately $15 to $35 per month for weekly or biweekly curbside recycling services. This fee typically includes one bin for paper products and another for metal and plastic. If you exceed this limit, you might pay an additional $2.50 to $7.50 per bin. Some companies also offer what's known as single stream recycling, which allows (usually for an added fee) customers to put all recyclable materials into a single bin, with no sorting required.

If you already pay for a trash pickup service, you may be able to bundle it with recycling for a reduced cost.