Ecology Action

Austin's Recycling Center

Ecology Action is Austin's downtown recycling center. We are located at Ninth Street and IH-35 (on the southbound access road), and open M-F 10-6, S-S 9-5. Refer to this map for strong hints about driving to the center.

Bring your:

accepted

  • Newspaper
  • Paper and Pressed Cardboard (like cereal boxes and egg cartons)
  • Aluminum Cans, Foil, and Pie plates
  • Tin Cans
  • Metal
  • Plastic (#1 thru #7). Included are bottles, jars, drink containers, and trays.
  • Glass Bottles and Jars
  • Corrugated Cardboard
  • Telephone Books, Hard & Soft cover books
  • DURING BUSINESS HOURS: Cellphones, Inkjet & Toner cartridges

Leave these at home!

not accepted

  • Motor oil containers
  • plastic bags
  • styrofoam: egg cartons, logs, peanuts.. none!
  • plate glass
  • pyrex anything
  • light bulbs
  • glass serving bowls, trays, etc.
  • waxed containers, e.g. milk, soy milk, juice

Want to Recycle More than Curbside?

Here is what we take. Ecology Action accepts more than Austin's Curbside Program (items in bold).

  • Glass bottles and jars
  • Plastics #1 thru #7 (take clean plastic bags to the supermarket or the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, please)
  • Aluminum cans, aluminum foil and pie plates
  • Tin cans and all scrap metal
  • Corrugated cardboard (any size)
  • All types of paper, paperboard, books, phone books, etc.
  • Separate paper bins for newspaper and for white office paper (ask staff about white paper)
  • Ink jet cartridges, toner cartridges and cell phones that include the battery (during open hours)

Details

As those who have been to our recycling center know, we recycle a lot of different materials here at Ecology Action. In addition to the materials you can recycle at the curbside through the City, we take a number of materials, and sizes and quantities of materials that the city does not.

First of all, we take paper. And not just newspaper, any type of paper except waxed paper (such as paper orange juice cartons). This means phone books, books, cereal box cardboard, and packing paper (please fold it if you can). And you can bring us as much as you can haul.

Corrugated cardboard is another big one. If you bring us cardboard, you don't have to cut it into 2 foot x 2 foot squares and bundle it. Just bring it on down. We would like you to flatten the boxes: that saves us a LOT of work.

We can recycle #1 thru #7 plastic of any type, except for bags. That means that we can take bottles, jars, tubs (such as yogurt and margarine bins), trays, cups and more. As long as it has a #1 thru #7 recycling symbol on it, and it's not a bag, we can now accept it.

In addition to tin (steel) and aluminum cans, you can bring us any type of metal. Scrap metal of any type, steel, iron, brass, copper, aluminum foil, pie plates, and cast aluminum, wire -- basically any type of metal, but ask the staff, please.

During attended hours we have a place for inkjet cartridges, toner cartridges, and cell phones, too.

So if you want to compliment your curbside recycling, bring the rest of it on down to our center. Just another example of our innovative recycling.