If your city does not have the ability to recycle plastic straws, then you can use my trick (which I call the “Repackaging Method”) to get them recycled properly.

Here are the details:

Instead of directly placing plastic straws in the recycling bin, put them first into a larger container that is also made out of polypropylene, or type 5 plastic.

This way, the plastic straws stored in the larger polypropylene container won’t fall through the cracks of conveyor belts during the sorting process. Therefore, they will make it past the sorting process and get recycled with other pieces of polypropylene.

Please note that some recycling facilities use human sorters, and your container might still be manually sorted out and tossed into the garbage. However, if your container makes it past the sorting stage, your straws will be shredded, cleaned, and re-processed (melted) along with other pieces of polypropylene in the plastic recycling process.

Some examples of type 5 plastic containers that straws can be placed into include plastic take-out containers, microwavable plastic containers, and margarine tubs or other similar containers.

To check if your container is the proper type, just check for the recycling label. Type 5 plastic (polypropylene) will be marked with a number 5 inside the recycling symbol. The image below illustrates this symbol:

This method isn’t foolproof, however.

Although my method means that plastic straws can be recycled by recycling machinery and recyclers, it doesn’t mean that the plastic will be recycled.

What do I mean by this?

Well you see, there is very little demand for recycled polypropylene, as it is worth very little, and it is very cheap to manufacture.

As a result, not many recyclers will recycle all the type 5 plastic that they receive. It just doesn’t make sense financially. In the end, some of the plastic will end up in landfills, even if it could have been recycled.

The bottom line?

Recycling isn’t the best option if you want to help solve this plastic straws problem. In fact, I don’t recommend that you use plastic straws and then recycle them, because recycling still involves the use of energy and other resources.

Below, you’ll find two ways of tackling this straws problem that are even better than recycling.

Hint: It will involve simply not using a plastic straw!