About RecycleLens

RecycleLens answers one question well: which bin does this go in, where I live? Point your phone at an item — or just type what it is — and get a straight answer for your city's actual collection program, plus the prep step that keeps it from being rejected at the sorting facility.

It exists because recycling rules are local, and almost every "can you recycle this?" answer online is written as if they aren't. A greasy pizza box belongs in the green organics cart in Seattle and in the trash in Houston. A banana peel is compost in California and landfill in most of Kansas. Generic advice is confidently wrong about half the country, and wrong advice is how recyclable material ends up contaminated and landfilled anyway.

How the bin verdict is produced

Two things have to be right: where you are, and what the item is.

• Your city's collection model. We maintain a registry of US residential collection programs — currently 501 verified entries covering the 500 largest US cities. Each entry records who actually collects residential curbside waste there and whether the city runs a two-cart program (recycling + trash, food scraps to the trash) or a three-cart program (recycling + organics/compost + trash). That distinction changes the answer for every food and yard item, so we verify it per city rather than assuming.
• The item. Your photo or description is read by an AI vision model, which identifies the object and its material, then applies the rule set for your city's program to produce the bin, the reason, and any prep step.

Where the local data comes from

City and hauler sources — municipal solid-waste pages, published franchise agreements, and haulers' own residential service-area listings. We check the residential program specifically: a county "exclusive commercial franchise" list names the company that hauls from businesses, which is frequently a different company than the one that empties household carts. Conflating those is one of the most common ways this data goes wrong, and we've corrected our own registry several times after catching it.

We also re-audit. Collection contracts change hands — a city privatizes, a franchise is re-awarded, one hauler acquires another — and a page that was accurate three years ago quietly becomes wrong. When our automated check disagrees with what we have stored, the conflict is researched against primary sources before anything changes.

What we don't claim

This is the part most sites leave out.

• Posted local rules are the authority — not us. Programs differ block by block, accept different plastics, and change their accepted-materials lists. Where it matters, confirm with your city or hauler.
• Not every city is verified. Where we don't have a verified program on file we say so and fall back to a conservative general baseline for your state, rather than inventing specifics. The scanner labels a verdict as general guidance when that's what it is.
• AI identification is not infallible. A blurry photo, an unusual composite material, or an item that's mostly hidden can be misread. Low-confidence results are flagged instead of being dressed up as certainty.
• We are not a hazardous-waste authority. For batteries, chemicals, sharps, and similar items we point you to the proper drop-off route and tell you not to put them in a curbside cart.

How it improves

Every verdict can be corrected. If a result is wrong, the 👎 button records which cart was actually right, and those corrections are reviewed to find systematic errors — an item we consistently misread, or a city whose rules we've got wrong. Corrections are used for review; a single report never silently flips a live verdict.

The written guides

Alongside the scanner we publish two libraries: how to dispose of specific hard items (mattresses, paint, batteries, appliances) with the disposal routes ordered best to last resort, and can you recycle…? answers for the everyday items people actually stand over the bin wondering about. Each names its source and the date it was last checked. There are also per-city guides for the cities in our registry.

Who runs it

RecycleLens is an independent project, not affiliated with any city, hauler, or waste company. Nobody pays for placement — no hauler or municipality can buy a different verdict, and the disposal advice is identical whether or not anything on the page is monetized. Running costs are covered by advertising on the written guides and occasional affiliate links, both disclosed in our privacy policy. The scanner itself carries no ads.

Corrections are genuinely welcome — if we have your city wrong, tell us and we'll research it: hello@recyclelens.com.