Toledo, OH Trash & Recycling: Recycling Requirements (2026)

Section 211, Collection of recyclable materials, in Appendix D to the Toledo Municipal Code establishes what the City's program is and what it accepts: the City of Toledo offers curbside single stream recycling of materials, recycle materials are to be placed directly in the container without being bagged, and single stream recycling means that all recyclable items are placed in one container and transported and separated at a materials handling facility.

The section then lists the accepted material categories by name: plastic, milk jugs, soda bottles, laundry detergent bottles; metal, aluminum and steel cans; glass, all colors of glass bottles and jars; and paper/cardboard, newspapers, magazines, phone books, junk mail, high grade paper (office paper, copier paper & notepad paper), boxboard (cereal boxes, dry food boxes & shoe boxes), and corrugated containers (cardboard). Because it's single stream, none of these categories need to be separated by the resident; everything goes loose into the one blue City-issued container described in Section 203, and sorting happens later at the materials handling facility rather than at the curb.

The without-being-bagged instruction in Section 211 is a collection requirement in its own right, recyclables inside a plastic bag are not run through the program's sorting line the way loose materials are, which is why Section 215's unauthorized-use rule and Section 212's participation rule both exist to police what actually goes into the blue container.