Save your thin plastics from the landfill
With the city and county not accepting it curbside, Ridwell makes it easy to waste less.
What is plastic film?
Clean, dry plastic bags are recyclable and there is a market for them.
From e-commerce packaging to toilet paper rolls, plastic film is everywhere. Although this material isn't accepted in curbside collection, thin plastics can be recycled and still have value!
Here are some examples that you might find around your home:
Ziploc bags
Bubble wrap
Air pillows
Grocery bags
Prime shippers
Poly-bags
Plastic wrapping
Newspaper bags
Dry cleaning bags
Cereal bags
Save your plastic from the landfill
Why doesn't it work curbside?
Plastic bags can tangle recycling collection machinery and contaminate otherwise marketable recyclables
Our modern recycling centers were not set up to handle plastic film. These facilities do a great job of separating sturdier material like metal, glass, and even higher-density plastic like detergent bottles.
Plastic film is a different story. Because it is flexible and light-weight, these items get caught in the machinery. When this happens, the entire line stops, wasting time and money. Even bagged plastic can cause problems as it can come apart and requires people to remove it manually from the process. This is why curbside recycling will no longer accept it!
Recology employee Keeyon Goodwin pulls plastic film out of a sorting line.
The plastic wrap has to be hand-sorted, often clogging the machines and forcing the facility to shut down several times a day.
How Ridwell is different
With Ridwell, your plastic stays clean and separate, ensuring that it stays out of the landfill.
Just because plastic film can't go curbside, that doesn't mean it should go in the trash. Ridwell offers pickup of plastic film plus much more every two weeks.
Don’t spend time driving around the city looking for a drop-off location. Don’t worry about your bag of bags splitting at the recycling facility.
Over 90% of our members have plastic film for us every pickup. For many, it was so impactful that they reduced the size of their trash bin!
Ridwell offers pickups every two weeks for your plastic film plus other categories of hard-to-recycle items.
As a Ridwell member, you can save your film and so much more from the landfill.
“I so appreciate Ridwell's services, especially collecting plastic film.
After all we now know about the role of plastic pollution in the ocean and elsewhere, it does my heart good to be able to divert some small bit of the plastic waste stream away from the landfill.”