Where to Recycle Difficult Items
Athletic Shoes: The Reuse-A-Shoe program encourages consumers to send their roughed-up, tattered, and defective athletic shoes to a Nike processing center for recycling. To learn more about the program, call (800) 352-NIKE.
Egg Cartons: Not every town can boast of an egg farm. If you want to recycle your egg cartons, take them to Flamig Farm to be reused.
Film Cartridges: Express Photo will recycle everything from single-use cameras to plastic film containers. They will pay to ship them back to Kodak to be melted down and reused. Other photo stores will take back the "polycon" film containers as well.
Gardening Materials: Most garden centers will accept the hard plastic containers and flats perennials come in. Others will accept the thin plastic flats annuals are grown in.
Metal Coat Hangers: Battiston and other cleaners take back and reuse metal hangers. They also take back plastic cleaner bags, which are melted down for green garbage bags.
Nickel-Cadmium Batteries (Ni-Cad batteries): According the the State Department of Environmental Protection, batteries may be taken to a Best Buy store or other retail locations. To find a location near you, you can check https://www.call2recycle.org/locator/ or contact Call2Recycle at 1-877-2-RECYCLE.
Plastic Bags: Return to Fitzgerald's of Simsbury.
Prescription Drug Bottles: Prescription Drug Bottles are not recyclable. They are too small for the sorting equipment used at recycling facilities and jam up the machines. Clean empty bottles can be disposed of in your trash. If there is medication in the bottle, you can either turn it in to the Police Department or follow these instructions:
https://www.recyclect.com/assets/downloads/consumerpharmdisposalfactsheet.pdf
Telephone Books: The phone company conducts major recycling during the month of April when the new phone books are distributed. Special recycling bins are made available at various outlets to make recycling of old phone books easier for the consumer.
Recycle-CT also has a super easy to use resource for determining how you can dispose of household items that are a little bit more difficult to recycle.