Recycling

Why Recycle?

Practicing recycling is important and helpful in reducing the amount of waste sent to local landfills. By reducing, reusing, and recycling our waste, we are helping to create a cleaner and healthier Visalia for future generations.

It's EASY. 

Recycling in the home, school, and workplace can be easy and convenient. Build in smart shopping habits to reduce the amount of food you waste. It's easy to use a rag to wipe spills rather than a disposable towel or a cloth bag that can be constantly reused to shop for groceries. The City of Visalia has convenient curbside recycling for paper, plastic, cardboard, bottles, and cans.

The City/County also sponsors a Household Hazardous Waste Collection Facility that will take back your used oil, automotive and household batteries, fluorescent light bulbs, and cell phones for recycling. In addition, many retail stores will take back recycling items such as electronic computers, monitors, TVs, and other electronic waste items. There are recycling opportunities everywhere that are easy and convenient to do every day.

  • Creates jobs. Recycling is big business in California. It is a mainstream industry of statewide importance, accounting for approximately 85,000 jobs and producing $10 billion in products and services per year.
  • Saves energy. A lot of energy is needed to make products. Energy is saved by reducing or reusing the amount of products we need to buy. Recycling also frequently saves energy because it takes less energy to clean or convert materials. For example, less energy is required to produce a gallon of re-refined oil than to create new oil.
  • Saves money. You can save money by smart shopping to reduce waste, reusing materials, and buying recycled products. You can also make money by turning in your bottles and cans.
  • Saves natural resources. Reducing, reusing, and recycling materials helps prevent the need to cut down new materials, such as trees, or dig into new mines. Also, it saves natural resources by not creating new landfills to hold new waste. Reducing, reusing, and recycling materials eliminates the need to build the equivalent of one new large landfill each year in California.

For more information on specific recycling services and programs, please view the links provided.

Carpet Recycling

Did you know that old carpet can be recycled and made into useful new products, like traffic signs, insulation, new carpet, and carpet padding? If you have old carpet to dispose of, please read about Carpet Recycling (PDF) for more information about our local carpet recycler.

ReStore

The Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Visalia is a nonprofit home improvement store and donation center that sells new and gently used furniture, appliances, home accessories, building materials, and more to the public at a fraction of the retail price. If you have an item that can be reused, consider donating it to our local ReStore. For more information, read about ReStore (PDF).