Check your municipality’s online guidelines to see if paper cans, paper canisters, cardboard cans, or other similar formats are accepted. Search Recycling Guidelines in My Area to get detailed information about what is accepted by your local recycler.
If your community subscribes to Recycle Coach or another app, simply search “Cardboard spiral cans” in the What Goes Where tool.
In most communities, paper cans are recycled in the steel stream, where they are blended with steel cans and recycled at a steel mill. At the steel mill, the metal in the paper and steel cans are recycled into new products, and the paper bodies and labels are incinerated, the same way a paper label on a steel can is.
The great thing is paper cans do not have a wax coating, so it doesn’t matter!
It depends. Consider a typical shelf-stable carton that has a fiber body, an aluminum liner on the inside, polyethylene coating on both the inside and outside, and a polypropylene cap. Cartons are still considered widely recyclable across the US. Even magazines normally contain 30%-35% clay filler with only 65%-70% recoverable fiber. How about that?
There are two main reasons why recycling programs vary from one community to another: infrastructure and end markets. Commingled recyclables are sent to a Material Recovery Facility (MRF), where they are sorted by material type (i.e., glass, cardboard, paper, plastics, metal, etc.). Some MRFs have advanced sorting technology, while others have limited equipment.
Second, and even more importantly, there must exist a reasonable market for the various types of recyclables. Some areas have robust markets, while others may lack buyers for certain commodities that could otherwise be recycled.