Can You Recycle a Greasy Pizza Box?

Anne Barnard��Reporting from Brooklyn

You’ve probably had this argument over greasy pizza boxes: recycle? Or no? In New York City, the answer is yes, as long as the box has just basic oil spots. If it’s caked with cheese or gunk? Trash it.

Here’s more surprising guidance about what you can — and can’t — recycle →

Can You Recycle a Greasy Pizza Box?

Anne Barnard��Reporting from Brooklyn

Another city staple that too often lands in the trash is paper coffee cups: They go in paper recycling. Coffee stains are OK, chunks of food are not.

The plastic lids? They go in the bin for plastic, metal and glass.

Can You Recycle a Greasy Pizza Box?

Anne Barnard��Reporting from Brooklyn

Cinemagraph — Sarah Blesener for The New York Times

Overthinking rules may be a reason half the city’s recyclables go to dumps, even aluminum cans, “the original classic recyclable,” Bridget Anderson, a deputy sanitation commissioner, told me. Cans don’t need to be “pristine,” she said, just empty. “An un-rinsed can is better than no can.”

Can You Recycle a Greasy Pizza Box?

Anne Barnard��Reporting from Brooklyn

City guidelines say recycle “rigid plastics.” But how rigid?

If you squeeze it and it snaps back to its shape, it’s OK. That fits a broad range of items: thick takeout containers, flexible yogurt tubs and even flimsier plastics, like produce boxes or clamshell packaging.

Can You Recycle a Greasy Pizza Box?

Anne Barnard��Reporting from Brooklyn

Still confused about which plastics to recycle? Check out these sorting machines at Sims Municipal Recycling in Brooklyn and picture what could get stuck: plastic wrap, bags, pouches, cords. Those are “tanglers.” Don’t recycle them.

Most everything else: yes.

Can You Recycle a Greasy Pizza Box?

Anne Barnard��Reporting from Brooklyn

Definitely do not recycle lithium batteries, even tiny ones in musical greeting cards. They start fires.

Each year at Sims alone, batteries cause around 100 smoking trash piles, which can ignite. Don’t throw them out either; recycle at special sites and events.

Can You Recycle a Greasy Pizza Box?

Anne Barnard��Reporting from Brooklyn

Also: Cartons for liquids like milk look like paper but don’t go in paper bins. Their metal or plastic linings mean they go in the other bin.

Caps can get lost or stuck. Keep them on bottles if they’re made of similar material: “If it’s the same, it remains.”

More about recycling in New York: