What you can and can’t recycle for the holidays

Published on December 22, 2022

The holidays are a great opportunity to recycle. Recycling helps preserve the longevity of landfills and gives a second life to items made from plastics, paper, cardboard and aluminum.

Fort Worth makes it easy to recycle with curbside collection and four drop-off stations for larger items and household hazardous waste.

Here’s a quick guide to remind you what goes where:

Bag it for the brown garbage cart

• Ornaments, ribbons and bows, colored tissue paper.
• All wrapping paper, including the metallic shiny kind.
• Bubble wrap (it can be recycled with your plastic bags at grocery stores).
• Greeting cards with decorations, glitter, music, etc.
• Outdoor and indoor lights.

Toss it in the blue recycling cart

• Cardboard boxes (flattened).
• Greeting cards (paper only with no decoration).
• Metal or aluminum pie plates.
• Glass bottles.
• Plastic bottles and food packages.

Place out for monthly bulk collection

• Artificial Christmas trees.

Place out for weekly yard collection

• Live green or flocked Christmas trees. All decorations and lights must be removed.

Take to a drop-off station

• Large cardboard boxes that don’t fit in your recycle cart.
• Batteries.
• Electronics.
• Bicycles.
• Christmas trees.

Donate

• Clothes, furniture, working appliances and miscellaneous household items such as toys and board games, plates, glasses, mugs and flatware.

Learn more.

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