Thrift Week 2026, Day 7: How to Recycle Plastic Bags

I'm going to wrap up this Thrift Week series with a type of waste that's particularly ubiquitous: plastic bags. Actually, here in New Jersey, they're a lot less ubiquitous than they used to be, as the state banned single-use plastic shopping bags in 2022. Now, when we go to the grocery store, we no longer need to rush to bag up our own groceries before the checker starts tossing them into a disposable bag. But plastic bags still make themselves into our home in other ways. The grocery fliers delivered weekly to our door come in a little plastic sleeve, and we occasionally have to grab disposable produce bags (which are still legal) at the grocery store. (We always have at least one reusable shopping bag with us, but if we make an impromptu stop at the store, we might not have our mesh produce bags.) We also end up with small plastic bags that once held foodstuffs like dry beans and popcorn. And occasionally something we've ordered comes in a box with a plastic liner.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to put these leftover bags to good use:

• We keep several of them in our shopping bag in case we run out of mesh produce bags. They're also useful for packing up foodstuffs from bulk bins on the rare occasions we visit a store that has any. 
• We save the little plastic sleeves that come with the grocery fliers and pass them on to my parents, who say they make ideal poop bags for walking the dogs. They're actually better than store-bought bags sold for this purpose because they're longer, so one bag can hold multiple poops.
• I often use larger bags to hold items I'm leaving out for a Freecycle porch pickup. The bag protects the item from the weather and gives the recipient a convenient way to carry it. And using a bag marked "Freecycle" eliminates any chance that a passerby will assume an item is simply being thrown away and try to grab it.
• Back in the days before the bag ban, we used to save plastic shopping bags to line our wastebaskets. But since we almost never accepted plastic bags, we usually didn't have enough for all the wastebaskets in the house, and we discovered that most of the time, we didn't really need them. The kitchen trash can is the only place we ever throw away anything wet or messy, and we still use store-bought bags for that.

But these flimsy little bags can't be used indefinitely. Eventually they develop holes, and then they have to be discarded. Our local supermarket used to have a bin where we could drop them off to be recycled, but it hasn't been there for years. So most of the time, damaged bags—along with other types of plastic packaging, like the envelopes that packages come in—just end up in the trash.

However, according to Earth911, that isn't the only option. Based on a quick search, it looks like there are many big-box stores in our area that collect both #2 and #4 plastic bags for recycling, including Target, Walmart, Sam's Club, and Kohl's. So we could simply stash all those unwanted plastic bags in the car and drop them in one of those store's bins the next time we're in the area, were it not for one snag: most of them don't have any sort of label on them to indicate which type of plastic they are. Right now, we have eight plastic bags that are no longer fit for service, and only one of them is labeled as #2 plastic. The rest are anybody's guess. 

 

Now, according to the websites for Target and Walmart, these stores accept all kinds of "plastic bags and films," not just specific numbers. So, in theory, we could just dump all our unwanted bags into one of their bins and let them try to sort them out. Maybe a lot of them would end up in the landfill anyway, but at least we'd be giving them every chance at getting recycled first. I guess it's worth a shot.

Thrift Week 2026, Day 6: How to Recycle Eyeglasses

I don't like to replace my eyeglasses any more often than I have to. This is partly because of the cost, which is over $200 even if you get them at Costco and around double that from an independent optician. (Back when I had single-vision lenses, I used to order them online, which was much cheaper. But with progressive lenses, apparently, you need an in-person fitting to get them lined up right.) But also, I have a really hard time finding frames I like. For a while, the type I prefer—full frame, metal, roughly oblong in shape, and not too big—were in fashion and it was easy to find them everywhere. But nowadays, petite metal frames are out and chunky plastic ones are in, and it's almost impossible to find a pair that I think looks good on me. So when I find some I like, I try to hold on to them as long as possible.

But sooner or later, my prescription changes, and I have to get new ones. (Sadly, I can't function without glasses long enough to hand mine over and wait for them to be fitted with new lenses.) So, over time, I end up accumulating old eyeglasses with outdated prescriptions. And while it makes sense to hold on to the most recent, just slightly outdated pair as a backup in case my current ones break, it doesn't really make sense to hold on to three or four extra pairs. Yet I hate to throw something that expensive in the trash. Even if they're no use to me anymore, it seems they should still be useful for someone.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so, because there are various organizations that collect old eyeglasses for reuse. Our eye doctor's office even has a collection bin right in the waiting room where we can drop our old glasses to be passed on to folks who can use them. Before we switched to this eye doctor, we used to put them in a bin hosted by the Lions Club, which has various collection sites throughout New Jersey. You can drop them off at various Lions Club buildings or in bins at participating Walmart Vision Centers. (This page has more details about the program in New Jersey.)

 

If the Lions Club locations aren't convenient for you, this blog post from Vision Center names several other donation sites. Its list includes Warby Parker, Sam's Club Optical Centers, Costco Optical, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army. I've never personally donated eyeglasses at any of these places, so I can't say how easy they are to use, or even whether they're still valid. But if any of them are on your regular route, it couldn't hurt to pop inside and ask. 

Thrift Week 2026, Day 5: How to Recycle Books

If there's one thing I really can't stand to throw out, it's a book. That's one reason why my bookshelves are so overstuffed, with some volumes stacked horizontally across the tops of others: to make room for them to fit properly, I'd have to get rid of something else. But there's a limit to how many books I can cram in this way, so eventually I have to bite the bullet and get rid of some.

If the books are still in readable condition, the best option is obviously to get them into the hands of someone else who can use them. Ways to do this include:

• Passing books on to people you know. This is my personal favorite if I happen to have a specific book I know a friend or family member will enjoy. The downside is that sometimes they give the book back after reading it, and then I have to find another new home for it.
• Selling them to a secondhand bookstore. I've only been able to do this a few times over the years, as secondhand bookstores never seem to last long in the places where I've lived. I never got much money for them—usually pennies on the dollar against the cover price—but even a dollar's worth of store credit is a nice bonus. It makes me feel better about bringing home a new book (or two or three) to fill up the space I've cleared on my bookshelf.
• Dropping them in a Little Free Library. Our small town has more than a dozen of these, so I can always manage to find space in one of them for any book I need to cull from my collection. And it adds a spice of interest to my future walks to pass by the same Little Free Library and see if it's still there. Of course, there again, the risk is that I end up bringing home more books than I got rid of. But at least they'll be books that are new to me instead of ones I've already read and don't plan to read again.
• Donating them to the library. Our local library holds a book sale once a year as a fundraiser. It spends a week collecting books from the locals, scoops up the best ones for its collection, and sells the rest at bargain prices—from 50 cents for small paperbacks and kids' books to $2 for most hardcovers. We often save up books we're done with in anticipation of this sale, but if it's only been a couple of months since the last one, we try to get rid of them some other way rather than hang onto them all year. Other libraries in our area don't wait for an annual sale; they sell donated books out of a mini-bookstore near the front of the building. Both these little bookstores and the annual sale are good sources of cheap reading material that will eventually become part of the book-overcrowding problem. (It's the ciiiiiircle of books...)
• Giving them to a prison library. I've never personally tried this, but I hear tell that prison libraries are always eager to add to their collections and may even take books other libraries won't accept, like old textbooks. The American Library Association has some info about organizations that can help you get your books into the hands of folks inside.

This is only a sampling of the possible places to donate books. The Local Book Donations site has a tool to search for organizations in your area that will take them. And of course, there are always the old standbys, Freecycle, Buy Nothing, and Trash Nothing.

 

All this is fine for usable books, but what about the ones that are completely falling apart? Well, in many  towns, including ours, the pages can go directly in the paper recycling bin as long as you remove the cover first. If you're not sure about it, you can check with your local waste/recycling/public works department. If your town doesn't accept them, you can always search trusty old Earth911 for paper recycling sites in your area.

 

However, a more entertaining option is to take those old pages and use them for craft projects. There are all kinds of things you can make with paper, including origami, paper mâché, beads, flowers, and decoupage. Heck, with enough pages and enough polyurethane, you could probably cover an entire floor the way we did in our downstairs room. For books that can no longer serve their true purpose as reading material, a second life as a bouquet of paper roses seems like a less tragic fate than the recycling bin.And if you're not of a crafty bent yourself, you can offer up the book pages to friends, or strangers on Freecycle, who are.

Thrift Week 2026, Day 4: How to Recycle Razors and Razor Blades

About four years ago, I gave up on cartridge razors and switched to a safety razor. After some unsuccessful experiments with a cheap one from Target, I bit the bullet and invested in a Twig from Leaf Shave. It cost quite a lot up front, but I'm hoping it will be a lifelong investment, unlike the various cartridge razors I've owned and been forced to discard after a few years of use—either because they broke or because they went off the market and it was no longer possible to buy replacement heads for them. Since it takes single-edged razor blades (which you can make by breaking standard double-edged blades in half), and since my frugal shaving hacks give me at least a month of use out of each blade, it's costing me less than 2 cents per shave. And when those blades finally wear out, all I have to discard is a tiny strip of metal, rather than a whole chunk of plastic.

 

However, I'd rather not discard even that much if I don't have to. So, ever since I made the switch to a safety razor, I've been saving the used blades in an empty candy tin, planning to take them to a scrap metal recycler when the tin got full. The one I initially found in Edison appears to have gone out of business, but a new search for "scrap metal" on Earth911 steered me toward a place in New Brunswick that might be able to take them. However, since the site says only that it takes metal scraps and doesn't specifically mention razor blades, I'm a bit concerned that they wouldn't take them. It seems like they should be able to take the entire steel tin full of blades and treat it as a single lump of metal, but maybe it doesn't work that way.

 

So I'm now thinking it might be a safer bet to recycle my blades through the Gillette recycling program. It takes blades and razors from all brands, and you can drop them off at any public collection site. According to the map on the website, there's one in Princeton that we could easily swing by before dance practice, so we wouldn't even have to make a special trip. Better still, this site takes not just blades but complete razors as well, so I could also use it to get rid of the unused cartridges and the orphaned handle from my last two failed cartridge razors, as well. I'd been thinking it was dumb of me to keep holding onto them "just in case," but now it's actually paid off!

Thrift Week 2026, Day 3: How to Recycle Batteries

As regular readers will know, I'm not a particularly tech-oriented person. I'm a late adopter who only replaces her computer every ten years or so and didn't even own a smartphone until 2018. So I was quite surprised the first time I calculated just how many devices we had that ran on batteries. There were literally dozens—some with their own built-in rechargeable batteries, some with single-use alkaline batteries. Even when batteries aren't included, they're very much required.

In the years since, we've swapped out most of those alkaline batteries for either rechargeable ones or longer-lasting lithium batteries. (We still have a few partially discharged ones lurking in a drawer, waiting for us to eke the last little bit of charge out of them.) Both of these, particularly the rechargeables, are a big improvement on the alkaline ones. They produce a lot less waste and cost less over their lifespan. But sadly, no battery lasts forever. Eventually, like their disposable cousins, they'll need to be tossed.

Fortunately, when their time finally comes, there are plenty of places to recycle them. Our local Department of Public Works takes them, as do many Home Depot and Lowe's stores. But the old-fashioned alkaline batteries pose a bigger challenge. Our local DPW no longer accepts these, telling us we should simply toss them in the trash. But this doesn't sit well with me. Although modern alkaline batteries contain a lot less mercury than they used to, they still have some, along with other metals like manganese and zinc that go to waste when they're discarded. Environmentally conscious areas, like California and most of Europe, don't allow them into household trash, and I don't want to allow them in mine if I can help it. 

 

The Earth911 Recycling Search isn't all that helpful in this particular area. Most of the places it lists in my area for recycling alkaline batteries are municipal programs that are only open to residents. I've had better luck with a couple of sites specifically devoted to battery recycling: Battery Network and Call2Recycle. As far as I can tell, both these sites use the same search tool, which you can customize to find recycling locations near you for multiple types of batteries: rechargeable, single-use, cell phone batteries, and even specialty kinds like e-bike batteries. In our area, there are several Staples that accept single-use batteries, including one that's quite easy to swing by on our weekly trip down to Princeton. It takes only a few minutes to drop them off, and we can even earn reward points for them.

 

So, if you live near a Staples store, or if you pass by one on your regular route, you can dispose of all your depleted batteries there—both rechargeable and disposable—at one fell swoop. If that's not an option and your only choice is the trash, then take the precaution of putting tape over their terminals before tossing them. (Actually, it's a good idea to do this even while they're sitting in the drawer so you don't risk a short-circuit if the terminals come into contact.) 

 

Of course, the best long-term solution would be to switch to rechargeable batteries for everything, so you'd never need to dispose of single-use ones at all. But with most rechargeable batteries still available only in AA and AAA sizes, it may be a while before that's practical.

Thrift Week 2026, Day 2: How to Recycle Electronics

One category of waste that's particularly tricky to recycle is electronics. Electronic waste, or e-waste, includes old phones, computers, and pretty much anything else containing circuits, which these days can mean anything from light bulbs to refrigerators. It's a huge category, over 60 tons a year worldwide, and it poses an even thornier problem than textiles. If worse comes to worst, those old jeans can go into the landfill, where they won't cause any more pollution than anything else in the landfill with them. But old phones and computers contain all sorts of nasty components, such as dioxins, mercury, and lead, which you definitely don't want getting into the environment. At the same time, they contain lots of valuable metals and minerals, such as gold, copper, and lithium, which you definitely don't want to go to waste. That makes recycling them both very difficult and very important.

Because e-waste is also hazardous waste, most places have specific rules about recycling it. In our town, for instance, we're supposed to take it down to the Department of Public Works. This is what we do with any device that's no longer usable, like the old VCR and tape deck we discarded earlier this month. (If your town doesn't have an official collection site, you can drop off most kinds of electronic gizmos at your local Best Buy or Staples store. Check Earth911 for locations near you.) But, just like with clothing, it's much better to keep an object that's still usable in use if possible. 

The most recent case in point for us was my old smartphone. When I replaced it in 2022, it was technically still working; it had just become so unreliable that it was impractical to use. (Not only did the battery drain really fast, even after I'd replaced it with a new one, but it would randomly shut down without warning.) It might have been possible to fix it, but it wasn't within my extremely modest abilities. So, rather than simply take it to the recycling shed, I did a quick search and found an organization called 911 Cell Phone Bank. They take old cell phones, repair or recycle them, and donate them to victims of domestic violence and human trafficking. If my old phone was fixable, they could probably fix it; if not, it would be recycled. So, worst-case scenario, it would be the same as if I'd taken it to the DPW; best-case scenario, I'd not only keep it out of the waste stream but help out someone who really needed it.

Donating my phone through this program was quite straightforward. First I wiped it by going into Settings and doing a factory reset. Then I went to the website, clicked the Donate Phones button, and selected 10 Devices or Less and Print Shipping Label. There was one minor snag when the label didn't print properly, so I had to submit my information a second time and have the label emailed to me as a PDF. But eventually I got it printed out, packed up the phone and the spare battery that hadn't done it much good, slapped on the label, and dropped it off at the post office. Easy peasy.

Computers are a bit trickier to dispose of than phones, mainly because they're bigger. However, they're also more valuable, so if you have a computer that's still usable, you can almost certainly find a new home for it. If it's a reasonably new one, you might even be able to get a little cash for it on Craigslist. We've never sold an old machine this way, but we recently bought one: Brian's new laptop, which will replace his work laptop when he retires this year. (Like his work computer, it's a Lenovo ThinkPad, which gets high marks for repairability, and buying it secondhand will make it even more sustainable. It's far from state of the art, but it's more than adequate for jobs like email and streaming TV shows, and it was only $200.)

But even if your computer is ancient and creaky, you can probably find someone willing to take it on Freecycle (or Buy Nothing or Trash Nothing). I've never Freecycled one of my own old computers, since I tend to keep them until they're effectively unusable, but I've successfully found homes for two old machines that had belonged to my parents. I forget exactly how old they were, but I know neither one was any spring chicken, and I still got multiple offers for each of them within 24 hours.

And if your computer is so old that, like mine, it's barely working at all, you may still be able to find a home for it through Computers4People. Like 911 Cell Phone Bank, they accept both working and nonworking machines. After wiping the data, they refurbish the ones that can be salvaged and donate them to people in need; everything else gets recycled. It's not quite as simple to use, because you can't just pop the device in the mail, but you can drop it off at any of over 10,000 FedEx and Walgreens stores across North America. Most sites only accept laptops, tablets, and smartphones, but there are few that take desktop machines and peripherals.

 

One important caveat: before getting rid of a computer or a phone, make sure to transfer all the files you need from it, then scrub the hard drive to remove all your personal data. PCMag offers guidelines on how to do this with both computers and phones. But if your device is well and truly bricked and you can't get onto the drive at all, don't worry; both 911 Cell Phone Bank and Computers4People promise to clear all data off donated devices before passing them on to new users.

Thrift Week 2026: How to Recycle All the Things (starting with textiles)

I've been writing this blog for over 16 years now (counting from January 2010, when I first decided to give my old blog an ecofrugal theme). In those 16 years, I've published over 1,600 posts. And the most popular of them all, by a huge margin, was a 2014 post on how to recycle whipped cream cans. In the 12 years since I posted it, it's received roughly 31,000 views—blowing away its nearest competitor, my post on building a raspberry trellis, with a mere 5,100 views. Over 160 people have viewed it just in the past week. Evidently, how to recycle hard-to-recycle objects is a topic that interests many, many people.

Hence, this year's Thrift Week is going to be all about that topic. I've already said pretty much all that needs to be said on the topic of whipped cream cans, but there are loads of other recycling challenges that I've explored over the years, and this will be my chance to share what I've learned. I've written about this subject before, most notably in my 2013 post "How to recycle everything (if you can)," but a lot of the info in that post is now outdated. This week's series will expand on that material and bring everything up to date. And I'm kicking it all off with one particular category of theoretically-recyclables that's given me considerable trouble over the years: textiles.

When you look for information on textile recycling, most of what you'll find is advice on clothing donation. And obviously, if you need to get rid of clothes in usable condition, this is the best thing to do with them. There are tons of places that will take old clothes, from local thrift shops to veterans' organizations. I personally just gave a big box of worn but still serviceable garments to the United War Vets Council, which emails me every so often to see if I have anything to donate. You can also give old clothes away on Freecycle (or its close cousins, the Buy Nothing Project and Trash Nothing) or offer them to your friends at a clothing swap. You might even be able to make a little money reselling them at a consignment shop (in store or online) or at a yard sale. In short, there's no shortage of ways to find a new home for wearable garments.

But if you're a frugal person like most readers of this blog, you tend to wear your clothes until you've worn them out. An old pair of jeans with thighs so threadbare you can't even patch them is clearly no longer wearable, yet it may still have plenty of good fabric left on it that could be put to use. Yet most of the sites listed under "textile recycling" won't actually take them. They're not really planning to recycle your garments; they're planning to resell or donate them, so they'll only accept clothes in good condition. And the few that do accept clothes for actual recycling may require you to cover the shipping costs, which can be considerable. Terracycle's prepaid Zero Waste Boxes, for instance, cost between $160 and $379. 

In my area, there are only two places I know of that genuinely recycle textiles. The one I rely on most is Helpsy. It accepts all types of fabric goods, donates the stuff that's still usable, and downcycles the rest into insulation, stuffing, or rags for industrial use. Only about 5 percent of it needs to be thrown out. Unfortunately, this organization operates only in the northeastern U.S., and even within that area, the number of its bins seems to be dwindling. The last time I tried to make a dropoff, both the bin I had been using in Princeton and the one closest to me in New Brunswick had mysteriously vanished. Fortunately, I was still able to find one, but it keeps getting more difficult. (Which is why I currently have a small collection of old socks, tights, and one battered potholder that's been sitting in the bedroom for several months, waiting until I can get it to a usable recycling bin.)

If Helpsy ever disappears completely, I can always fall back on the garment collection program at H&M. The store has bins where you can drop off clean, used garments from any brand, which get sent to its "partners" overseas to be sorted. The usable items are resold, the unusable ones get downcycled, and a small fraction of the material gets fully recycled into new textiles. This isn't an ideal solution for me because the nearest H&M store is in a mall we never otherwise visit (the traffic is awful), and because of the additional carbon costs of shipping the garments halfway around the world. But it's better than nothing.

If neither of these organizations works for you, you might be able to find a better one through Earth911. This handy site has a tool to help you find recycling facilities near you for just about anything, including clothing. Unfortunately, its suggestions aren't always helpful. Many of the textile recycling programs it lists near me either (a) only accept items in good condition, (b) only accept specific items, such as sneakers or bras, or (c) are only available to residents of a particular town. But it's at least worth a check.

Whenever possible, though, we prefer to take the recycling of our clothes into our own hands. Those old trousers too worn to hold a patch usually get tucked away in my scrap fabric bin so I can cut them up to make patches for other garments. If the bin is too full to hold the entire garment, I at least keep the pockets, which make handy ready-made patches for holes in the knees of Brian's jeans. Similarly, when his T-shirts and socks get too worn out to be darned, we rip them up and turn them into cleaning rags. And little scraps too small to get used for anything, if they're made of natural materials, can go into the compost bin, where they'll eventually break down into useful fertilizer for our garden. Now that's truly cradle-to-cradle recycling.