Welcome to our new list of accepted items. Please read below carefully to understand what we accept and the color coding on our list.
This year we are focusing on items that are essential to daily living and can be reused, repurposed, easily recycled or don’t have affordable low-to-no waste options yet (or they do but people are still transitioning). We also will continue to accept materials on behalf of local artists or in collaboration with other organizations.
We have stopped accepting items that have what we call a “high personal decision factor” or have more sustainable alternatives, things like chip bags, snack containers, beauty product packaging and toys. We have also greatly limited some items we receive in abundance until we come up with a better way of handling them.
For more details, visit our blog post about why we reduced our accepted items list.
The key to the color codes below:
GREEN — items we accept.
YELLOW — items we will accept until the current shipment box is full, after which it may be discontinued.
ORANGE — items that are on hold and will not be accepted at the upcoming collection.
RED — Items that are no longer accepted.
PURPLE — Items that are a collaboration with an artist or other organization, which may rotate depending on need. The items in purple below will be collected on Feb. 25, but may not be at future events.
Questions? Email us at ReduceWasteChicago@gmail.com.