Los Angeles has one of the most misquoted recycling lists in the country, mostly because people answer it from memory instead of from the page the city publishes.
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Published · last checked · written by the crew at Los Angeles Junk Removal & Hauling
In the City of Los Angeles the blue bin takes paper, cardboard, cartons, glass bottles and jars, metal cans and clean foil, and plastics numbered 1, 2 and 5, all empty, clean and dry. Plastic bags, foam, batteries, hoses and propane tanks stay out.
That is the whole rule. LA Sanitation asks one thing first: “please make sure they are empty, clean, and dry.” Collection is weekly, on your normal day, and the service belongs to homes and buildings of four units or fewer.
It is confusing because four sets of rules stack. The city runs the bin. The state writes the labeling law. The manufacturer prints a symbol that may mean nothing in California. And the next city over bans a material outright that Los Angeles landfills.
Every line below traces to the body that sets the rule — LA Sanitation’s blue bin page, CalRecycle, and the Long Beach municipal code.
LA Sanitation publishes four accepted categories and one condition: paper and cardboard, plastics 1, 2 and 5, glass, and metal, all empty, clean and dry. The city's single-family page adds a fifth item: “Paper, cardboard, cartons, metals, glass, and plastics 1/2/5.”
Every accepted item is packaging: a container something else arrived in. That observation answers most of the questions people ask about this bin.
| Paper and cardboard | Junk mail, newspapers, cereal boxes, flattened delivery boxes |
|---|---|
| Plastics 1, 2 and 5 | Clean bottles, jugs and tubs, the kind yogurt comes in. The number decides it, not the shape |
| Glass | Bottles and jars, any color |
| Metal | Aluminum cans, tin cans, clean foil |
| Cartons | Listed by LASAN with paper, cardboard, metals, glass and plastics 1/2/5 |
| Condition | “Empty, clean, and dry.” A rinse or a wipe, not a wash |
| Who gets it | Single-family homes and buildings of 4 units or fewer |
| Kept out, city's own wording | Food and liquids; “tanglers” such as hoses, holiday lights and wires; batteries, bulbs and chemicals; tires and mattresses |
| Why it matters | LASAN: “Putting the wrong things in the Blue Bin can ruin a whole truckload of recycling.” |
Source: LASAN blue bin and LASAN single-family residents, read September 11, 2026.
Contamination is an operational word, not a scolding one. A load is tipped onto a line and sorted by machines that are good at rigid containers and paper and bad at the rest.
LASAN is blunt about one category: garden hoses, holiday lights and wires are “tanglers” and they “can break our sorting machines.” CalRecycle is blunt about batteries, banned from trash, recycling and organics because they “cause fires with worker injuries in sorting and recycling facilities.”
| Plastic bags and film | Black bin, under non-recyclable plastics. Long Beach says the same |
|---|---|
| Polystyrene foam | Black bin. LASAN groups Styrofoam with the non-recyclable plastics |
| Plastics 3, 4, 6 and 7 | Black bin. Only 1, 2 and 5 are collected at the curb here |
| Food-soiled paper | Green bin. Napkins, paper towels, coffee filters and pizza boxes are organics here |
| Hoses, holiday lights, wires | Out of the blue bin. Rubber hoses are listed by LASAN as black bin trash |
| Batteries, every type | S.A.F.E. Center or a library battery bucket. Alkaline, lithium-ion, button cell, lead-acid, e-bike |
| Propane cylinders | S.A.F.E. Center. CalRecycle bans gas cylinders from the trash |
| Needles and sharps | Never any bin. LASAN: they “should never be placed in household trash or recycling bins.” Use a kiosk or mail-back |
| Electronics | S.A.F.E. Center, mobile collection event, or free bulky-item pickup. CalRecycle: do not throw electronics in the trash |
| Clothing and fabric | Donate if usable. LASAN puts worn-out fabric in the black bin |
| Crockery and ceramics | Black bin, listed by LASAN as household trash. Blue bin glass means bottles and jars, so a broken mirror is not blue bin glass |
| Nonempty aerosol cans | S.A.F.E. Center. CalRecycle says never bin anything labeled TOXIC or FLAMMABLE |
| Fluorescent tubes and LED lights | S.A.F.E. Center. LEDs often contain toxic metals |
| Treated wood | The agencies differ. LASAN puts small treated wood in the black bin; CalRecycle calls it hazardous waste. Neither says blue |
Sources: LASAN black bin, LASAN S.A.F.E. Centers and CalRecycle, Waste Banned from the Trash.
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The opposite mistake goes unnoticed: good material walking into the black bin because somebody was not sure. Cartons are the big one. LASAN names them as blue bin material, and they land in the trash because they feel like two materials at once.
Large metal is the other. Not a blue bin item, but not a paid problem either: LASAN runs a free Metal Appliance Pickup for refrigerators, washers, dryers, dishwashers, air conditioners and water heaters, and adds that if your item is “mostly metal,” call and ask.
Two honest gaps. We will not tell you an empty aerosol can belongs in the blue bin: LASAN lists aerosol cans under household hazardous waste, and CalRecycle's ban is written around cans that are not empty. And no LASAN page we found rules on wire hangers either way, so we are not inventing one.
A few seconds of rinsing or a wipe is the standard, not a wash.
LASAN's own example of accepted cardboard is “flattened delivery boxes.”
1, 2 and 5 go blue. 3, 4, 6 and 7 go black. That is the whole test.
Milk and juice cartons are on the LASAN blue bin list. They are not trash here.
LASAN lists pizza boxes with napkins and coffee filters as food-soiled paper.
Free Metal Appliance Pickup, one business day of notice, 1-800-773-2489.
Plastic bags are the most common wrong thing in an LA blue bin, and the city's answer is blunt: film plastic is black bin material. Bagging your recycling first is the same mistake twice.
Store take-back bins are where clean film has long gone, and many large retailers still have them, but we could not confirm a current statewide requirement on a state page, so we will not claim one.
Foam depends on which side of a line you are standing. In Los Angeles it is trash. In Long Beach it is a code violation for a business to hand it to you, and retail sale has been prohibited since October 2020. Long Beach counts more than 135 California cities and counties with ordinances of that kind.
| Bags and film, City of LA | Black bin, listed by LASAN under non-recyclable plastics |
|---|---|
| Bags and film, Long Beach | “Do not put plastic bags … in your recycling cart” |
| Carryout bags, from January 1, 2026 | SB 1053 (Blakespear, 2024). Most grocery, pharmacy, convenience and liquor stores may provide only recycled paper carryout bags, at a minimum charge of ten cents |
| Pre-checkout bags, from January 1, 2025 | SB 1046 (Eggman, 2022). Recycled paper, or compostable bags meeting the standard |
| Paper bags, from January 1, 2028 | Minimum 50 percent postconsumer content |
| Foam foodware statewide, since January 1, 2025 | Producers restricted from selling expanded polystyrene food service ware in California, because the 25 percent recycling rate required by SB 54 was not met |
| Long Beach Municipal Code 8.63 | Signed May 4, 2018; foodware restrictions from December 3, 2019; straws on request only from March 28, 2020 |
| Long Beach, October 1, 2020 | Retail sale of polystyrene prohibited citywide, including packing peanuts, meat trays and egg cartons. Enforcement began June 2024 |
Sources: CalRecycle bag requirements, CalRecycle EPS foodware and the Long Beach Polystyrene Ordinance FAQ.
If you have ever held something stamped with chasing arrows and felt certain it was recyclable, you have met the problem SB 343 was written to fix. CalRecycle puts it plainly: “Until 2021, California did not set specific criteria to use chasing arrows recycling logo.”
It is also not being enforced. A federal court issued a preliminary injunction on July 14, 2026 blocking enforcement while the case proceeds. That is why the symbol cannot be trusted against the list your city publishes.
| AB 341 (Chesbro, 2011) | A business generating four cubic yards or more of solid waste a week, or a multifamily dwelling of five units or more, must arrange recycling. In force since July 1, 2012 |
|---|---|
| AB 827 (McCarty) | Since July 1, 2020, covered businesses must put recycling and organics containers at front of house |
| SB 1383 (Lara, 2016) | 2025 targets of 75 percent less organic waste landfilled and 20 percent of unsold edible food recovered |
| SB 1383, the part people miss | CalRecycle counts paper and cardboard as organics, which is why food-soiled paper is green bin material |
| SB 343 (Allen, 2021) | Bans the chasing arrows, or any indicator of recyclability, unless criteria are met. Applies to items made after October 4, 2026 |
| SB 343 status today | A preliminary injunction of July 14, 2026 in California League of Food Producers v. Bonta blocks it |
| AB 1201 (Ting, 2021) | A product labeled compostable must meet performance and CDFA organic standards, be third-party certified, and contain no PFAS |
| SB 54 (Allen, 2022) | Covered packaging and single-use plastic foodware sold in California must be recyclable or compostable by January 1, 2032 |
Sources: CalRecycle AB 341, SB 1383, SB 343 and the History of California Solid Waste Law.
Everything above is the residential program. Five units or more, or any business, and none of it is yours. LASAN writes the blue bin service for “a single-family home or a small apartment building (4 units or fewer).” Above that line you are a recycLA customer.
recycLA is the city's exclusive franchise system for commercial, industrial, educational, major apartment and condominium properties, more than 66,000 of them. Each zone has one assigned hauler: Athens, CalMet, NASA, Republic, Universal Waste Systems or Waste Management. You do not choose.
The same five-unit threshold is state law. AB 341 requires multifamily properties of five units or more to arrange recycling service, and lets an owner require tenants to separate recyclables. A tenant with nowhere to put cardboard has a compliance problem, and the property manager owns it.
Read the list again. Bottles, jars, cans, boxes, cartons, tubs. The blue bin is a packaging return system that lives in your driveway. It is not a disposal service.
A broken bookcase is not a recycling problem. Neither is a television, a bag of clothes nobody will wear again, or the contents of a garage. Forcing any of it in does not recycle it. At best the driver leaves the bin. At worst it reaches the sorting line and takes the clean material down with it.
Use the free routes first. Bulky items go on LASAN's curbside collection, which the city calls “an unlimited curbside service at no additional charge to you,” booked one business day ahead on 1-800-773-2489 or through MyLA311. Televisions and computers ride that pickup as e-waste. Chemicals, paint, batteries and propane go free to a S.A.F.E. Center, up to 15 gallons or 125 pounds a visit. LASAN says it before its own service: if the furniture is still good, donate it.
We are worth calling when the volume is a whole garage, when the load has to come down stairs instead of sitting at a curb, when a deadline does not fit the collection calendar, or when it needs splitting between e-waste, donation and landfill. If your answer is one couch and two weeks of patience, call the city instead.
Every rule, fee, limit and deadline on this page is from the body that sets it. Checked on the date above; if a city changes its program we change the page.
Same crew, one visit, one number agreed before anything is lifted.
The whole garage in one visit. We sort, donate what is usable and sweep the slab.
TVs, CRT monitors and computers. Banned from the trash in California.
Couches, sectionals, mattresses in the same trip, beds, desks and wardrobes carried down rather than dragged.
COIs, after-hours dock slots and property-manager invoicing.
The rest of the LA disposal manual.
Food scraps in the green bin, palm fronds that jam the truck, trunks the city will not take, and the state law behind all of it.
Electronics have been banned from California trash since 2006. Here is every free drop-off in LA and what to wipe before you go.
Thirteen Los Angeles-area programs in one table: how many free pickups a year, how many items, who to call and what each one refuses.
The follow-up questions people ask after this one.
No. LA Sanitation lists plastic bags and film plastic under non-recyclable plastics for the black trash bin, with Styrofoam and plastics 3, 4, 6 and 7. Bagging your recycling first is the same mistake, because the bag itself is contamination and the sorting line was never going to open it.
Only resin codes 1, 2 and 5. LA Sanitation describes them as clean bottles, jugs and tubs, the kind yogurt comes in. Plastics 3, 4, 6 and 7 appear on the city's black bin page as trash. The number inside the triangle decides it, not the shape.
No. LA Sanitation lists pizza boxes with napkins and coffee filters as food-soiled paper for the green organics bin. That beats the trash, because under SB 1383 California counts paper and cardboard as organic waste. Clean dry cardboard is still blue bin paper.
A S.A.F.E. Center, free. CalRecycle bans all batteries and compressed gas cylinders from the trash, recycling and organics bins, and notes that batteries cause fires and worker injuries at sorting facilities. LASAN takes propane, aerosols, paint and bulbs, up to 125 pounds a visit.
In Los Angeles, polystyrene foam is a non-recyclable plastic for the black bin. The state went further: since January 1, 2025 producers are restricted from selling expanded polystyrene food service ware in California, because the recycling rate required under SB 54 was not met. Long Beach banned retail sale in October 2020.
Not at five units or more. LASAN's residential blue bin service covers homes and buildings of four units or fewer. Larger buildings are recycLA customers, served by one assigned franchise hauler per zone. AB 341 makes arranging that service the property's duty, not the tenant's.
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