Things You Didn't Know You Could Recycle

Americans really don't recycle as often as they should — whether this is due to laziness, lack of accessibility of recycling bins, or just pure ignorance of the opportunity, tons upon tons of trash that could have been repurposed is piling up in landfills. According to data from 2017, a whopping 50 percent of the 254 million tons of trash Americans throw away is recyclable.

Things You Didn't Know You Could Recycle Gallery

The good news is that it's not really that hard to make your life more Earth-friendly — no matter how inconvenient it may seem. Realistically, it may only take a few extra minutes of sorting recyclables and delivering donated items to save the planet hundreds of years of decomposing garbage.

Plastic containers are usually labeled with a small recycling logo. Paper is almost always recyclable, along with cardboard, glass, and the other typical items. However, there are regular household items that either aren't labeled or don't belong in the recycling bin, per se, that you can still recycle. These are 15 of the most common items people don't know they can recycle.