Recycling purple glass—whether it's tinted decorative glass or a standard bottle—requires a specialized approach. Because mixed glass contaminates other recyclables (like paper and plastic) in single-stream curbside bins, it is often best handled through specialized purple community drop-off bins or local glass programs.
Brown, green and clear glass are the most commonly recycled types but if the glass is contaminated with food or dirt then it can't be processed at the recycling facility. Similarly, heat resistant glass such as ovenware and Pyrex, as well as mirrors and crystal, are not recyclable.
Clear, brown and green glass are recycling winners, but not all glass is created equal. Unfortunately, ceramics, Pyrex and other non-recyclable glass varieties need a different home. Keep an eye out for what's accepted and what's not to give your glass items the sustainable second act they deserve.
6 Best Items To Recycle For Money: Trash For Cash
What glass can you recycle? You can recycle empty glass bottles and jars of all colours and sizes, including: wine and beer bottles. food bottles and jars such as sauce and jam jars.
Colored and clear glass are separated to keep the glass quality intact. Colored glass is sorted out so that manufacturers using recycled glass can achieve a specific color and clarity for their products.
Not all types of glass can be recycled. Bottles and jars of any color, eyeglasses, and clear glass used in containers are recyclable. However, frosted glass, Pyrex, plates, oven-safe dishes, mirrors, windows, light bulbs, and ceramics can't go into the recycling process.
According to some researchers, plastic water bottles could take upwards of 450 years to decompose. That's equivalent to 5,400 months, or 21,600 weeks, or 1,971,000 days just for one single plastic bottle to decompose.
Pound for pound, precious metals like gold, silver, platinum, and palladium extracted from electronics and catalytic converters are the most valuable recycled materials. However, for everyday, large-volume recycling, copper and aluminum are the most economically valuable and highly sought-after scrap commodities.
Copper is the leading choice in scrap metal values today. In early 2026, current prices for premium grades have surged well past $4 per pound, making it highly lucrative for waste management operations.
Several common household and commercial items are not recyclable through standard collection programs, despite appearing to be made of recyclable materials. The most frequent offenders include greasy pizza boxes, disposable coffee cups, plastic-coated paper, bubble wrap, and small electronics.
Specialised Recycling
Bedsheets & Linen in good condition are often collected in door-to-door collection drives and cash for trash events. Items that don't meet their quality standards may be rejected or sent for incineration.
Pyrex cannot be recycled in standard curbside programs because it is designed to withstand extreme temperatures, meaning it has a much higher melting point than standard glass jars and bottles.
Ziploc-brand bags and other sandwich bags can be recycled with other types of film plastic, including shopping bags, dry-cleaning bags and produce bags. The best place to find recycling centers for these products is your local grocery store. Many retailers offer bins right inside the door that collect film.
Glass: up to 4,000 years
A frightening 4,000 years is how long it takes a glass bottle to decompose in the environment. Every time we leave a recipient of this kind in the countryside, we are putting the environment and its ecosystem at risk.
❌Do NOT put things like mirrors, window panes, drinking glasses, glass dishes, and vases in your recycling bin. These have different melting points than glass bottles and jars, so they can't be processed together. Broken glass is also a no-go (it's a safety hazard). Put these in the trash.
It takes roughly 150 to 200 pounds of aluminum cans to make $100, assuming you are selling them at standard scrap metal rates of about $0.50 to $0.65 per pound. This translates to about 4,800 to 6,400 standard 12-oz empty cans.
"Dirty copper" is a scrap metal term for unalloyed copper that contains minor contaminants or attachments (like solder, paint, brass fittings, or light oxidation). While still highly recyclable and mostly pure, it requires extra processing at the foundry, which lowers its value compared to clean copper.
The spot price for raw copper is approximately $6.25 to $6.38 per pound.
Platinum and palladium are both widely considered to be approximately 30 times rarer than gold in the Earth's crust. Because of their scarcity, they are highly sought after for both investment purposes and demanding industrial applications like catalytic converters and hydrogen fuel cells.
The most in-demand collectibles right now include vintage pop-culture memorabilia, rare U.S. currency, classic timepieces, and Trading Card Games (TCGs)—with Pokémon and crossover sets like Magic: The Gathering leading the pack.
What are the hardest things to recycle?
Plastic waste is one of many types of wastes that take too long to decompose. Normally, plastic items can take up to 1000 years to decompose in landfills. But plastic bags we use in our everyday life take 10-20 years to decompose, while plastic bottles take 450 years.
Ultimately, according to the FDA, even when companies print dates on water bottles, there's no required expiration date or shelf life of bottled water—and you should be fine, as long as the bottles were stored correctly!