Recycling

Join in helping to keep our community clean, while conserving valuable resources, energy, and money. Throughout Yreka and Siskiyou County, there are multiple facilities for recycling everything from:

  • E-waste
  • Oil filters
  • Packaging and paper waste:
    • Aluminum cans
    • Cardboard
    • Glass
    • Paper
    • Plastics, etc.
  • U-waste
  • Used oil

Facts

  • Recycled aluminum can take 95% less energy to make than a new one. Recycling just one can save enough energy to run a TV for 3 hours.
  • A glass bottle will stay in the landfill for one million years before it will completely degrade.
  • One extra large t-shirt can be made from five recycled plastic soda bottles.
  • Each ton of paper recycled saves 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 4,100 kilowatts of electricity, and keeps 60 pounds of pollutants out of the air.

Additional Information

  1. Hazardous Waste & Universal Waste (U-Waste)
  2. Electronic Waste (E-Waste)
  3. Used Oil & Oil Filters

U-waste is the name used to describe items containing hazardous materials that cannot be disposed of in household garbage due to the danger it may cause your garbage handler as well as the possibilities of water supply contamination.

Items Banned from the Trash

(Note: All of the items have been banned from household and business garbage, and most can be recycled at one of our area's local facilities.)

  • Automobile related:
    • Antifreeze
    • Batteries
    • Motor Oil
    • Oil Filters
    • Tires
  • Household and landscape chemicals
  • Lights, batteries, and electronics (fluorescent lamps and tubes, all batteries, electronic devices)
  • Mercury-containing devices:
    • Electrical switches and relays
    • Mercury added novelties (greeting cards that play music, athletic shoes (made before 1997) with flashing lights in the soles and mercury maze games)
    • Mercury gauges
    • Mercury thermometers
    • Pilot light sensors
    • Thermostats that contain mercury
  • Paints and solvents
  • Some building materials (asbestos and treated wood)
  • Other
    • Compressed gas cylinders
    • Needles and sharps generated in-home healthcare
    • Non-empty aerosol cans that contain hazardous materials
    • Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB)-containing materials (includes paints and ballasts that contain PCB)
    • Photo waste (silver-bearing)

View the complete list of Items Banned from California Garbage.

Recycling Locations and Items Infographic