How well does Connecticut recycle? We put it to the test

Historically, Connecticut has recycled just a third of the four million total tons of waste we generate every year.

We wanted to see how well the metals, plastic and glass that we work so hard to clean end up in the recycling stream.

We put AirTags in a few of them to try to find out. Several recycling administrators told us our test would not impact operations.

Connecticut has often received a top 10 ranking for its recycling, with a rate of 63% for containers and packaging by one measure.

That’s better than Mississippi at 17%, but not as good as number one Maine, which recycles at a 74% rate.

East Hartford solid waste official Cesar Zapata was brought in to improve recycling efforts in one of central Connecticut’s largest towns.

In his two years of inspecting what people put in their bins, the town reported the amount of recyclables that went to landfills due to contamination dropped from 53%, to just 7%.

Contaminants have caused a lot of problems for recyclers.

At Casella Waste Systems' new $15 million materials recovery facility for recyclables in Willimantic, work has often been slowed by people adding liquids, lithium ion batteries, and something they call “tanglers,” to their bins.

“Material like ropes, cords, plastic film wrap that will go into that machinery get tangled around the wheels, and then people actually have to crawl in there, rip it apart, cut it out there," Jeff Weld with Casella Waste Systems said.

We discovered holes in our system, when it comes to finding a state-mandated recycling coordinator who knows what to put in your blue bin: 10% of the email addresses for them on a state website were incorrect when we checked.

One automated response via email said the coordinator passed away four years ago.

This alarmed Jen Heaton-Jones, executive director of the Housatonic Resources Recovery Authority, which serves a large chunk of southwestern Connecticut towns and cities.

“Why is that position not valued when every single resident in the state of Connecticut creates garbage every day?” she said.

NBC Connecticut Investigates also found many annual recycling reports filed by towns and cities with the state were incomplete, if they were filed at all.

Getting businesses to recycle more has remained a challenge. Heaton-Jones has supported expanding something called extended producer responsibility, or EPR, where consumers pay a small fee for products on the front end, and then they are picked up by haulers and separated out at recovery facilities and routed back to manufacturers to use again.

“The consumer buys the product….at the end of its life, there is a system to take that product back and for it to be recycled," Heaton-Jones said.

Other initiatives in Connecticut to get us recycling more include an easier way to get your bottle and can deposits back, and continued use of “pay as you throw” in some towns, where you are charged for the amount of garbage you throw out.

As for our informal AirTag test, it appears at least five of the six recyclables made it to their recovery facilities.

One of our metal can AirTags stopped tracking once it got to a Danbury transfer station.

Click here for more on what you need to know about recycling.

NBC Connecticut Investigates received the following statement from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

"Connecticut has long been recognized as a leader in materials management, thanks in part to its mandatory statewide recycling law and its emphasis on building accessible programs for every resident. In 2023, approximately 35% of Connecticut’s municipal solid waste (MSW) was diverted from disposal through recycling or composting — a figure that reflects broad statewide participation. But it also makes clear that we must continue to modernize and expand systems if we are to achieve the state’s statutory goal of 60% diversion. 

One of the most promising areas of progress is in another form of recycling, organics diversion, particularly food scraps. In 2023, Connecticut diverted nearly 38,000 tons of food scraps from the waste stream — a 44% increase over 2022 and a remarkable 368% increase since 2021. That momentum is being driven by towns piloting curbside collection, co-collection with trash, and drop-off programs supported by the Sustainable Materials Management (SMM) grant program. Still, food waste represents more than 20% of what ends up in the trash, so unlocking more diversion in this category remains one of the most powerful opportunities to reduce waste and lower costs for residents and municipalities, statewide. 

DEEP is working to meet that challenge by supporting innovation and scaling up infrastructure through the $15 million in Materials Management Infrastructure (MMI) grants announced last week. These grants are funding facility construction, equipment upgrades, and regional processing capacity to handle increasing volumes of compostable material. They build on the success of the SMM pilot programs and enable towns to take the next step — moving from small pilots to permanent, community-scale systems that reduce waste and costs. The planned upcoming second round of SMM grants focus on helping municipalities launch lasting programs that remove food waste from the waste stream, improve collection systems, and make composting as accessible and normalized as recycling. 

At the same time, Connecticut’s mixed recycling program — covering common curbside items like glass, paper, metal, and plastic — continues to serve as the backbone of the state’s diversion strategy. Capture rates remain relatively strong, but we’ve seen small declines of around 2% annually in recent years, largely due to market shifts and contamination. That makes public education, clear recycling guidance (like Connecticut’s statewide “What’s IN, What’s OUT” list), and stable end markets more important than ever. 

When Connecticut residents are consistent about using recycling and organics systems, the remaining waste that gets sent to landfills or waste-to-energy facilities largely consists of items that are truly difficult to recycle or divert — things like multi-material packaging, contaminated materials, bulky waste, and certain commercial or industrial discards. That’s where innovation, updated policies, and extended producer responsibility (EPR) efforts (like mattresses, paint, and camping fuel bottles) can come in— to help rethink systems upstream and reduce what ends up downstream. As DEEP continues to implement the Comprehensive Materials Management Strategy (CMMS), these modernization efforts — backed by infrastructure grants, municipal partnerships, and lessons learned from pilots — are helping."