Explore Alternatives Just because your municipality doesn’t accept an item for recycling doesn’t always mean that it isn’t possible to recycle it at all. Oftentimes, there are standalone collection areas within your city designed to accept specific kinds of waste. Car seats, for example, are a huge chunk of usually unrecyclable plastic, but some cities have set up collection locations (often at a baby store, for example) where the seats are gathered to be recycled. Similarly, many big-box electronics stores have bins to collect batteries, light bulbs and some electronics for recycling. TerraCycle, a company with the bold goal of recycling the unrecyclable, offers recycling programs for chocolate bar wrappers, coffee pods, cigarette butts and more. In short, your first step should be to do some digging and make totally sure that your item can’t be recycled before moving on to your second option.