Are wire hangers recyclable?
Usually no
Not in your curbside bin, because they tangle in the sorting machinery. They are good scrap steel though, so take them to a scrap yard, a drop-off site, or back to your dry cleaner.
Follow it down the line
Three different questions hide inside "is this recyclable?", and the answer can change at each step.
The material · Yes
Is the material recyclable?
A wire hanger is steel, usually with a thin coating. Steel is magnetic, which makes it the easiest thing in the whole waste stream to pull out: magnets divert millions of tons of it from waste to recycling every year, and North America puts 60 to 80 million tons of steel scrap back into new steel annually. It is also 100 percent recyclable in the strict sense, recycled into the same material at the same quality again and again, so a hanger really can come back as a steel beam or a car door. Scrap yards take hangers by weight without complaint. Nothing about the metal is the problem, which makes this one of the clearest cases on the site of a good material defeated entirely by its shape. The scale is worth a moment, because it is the reason a scrap yard is genuinely pleased to see a bundle of hangers rather than merely tolerant of it. EPA put ferrous metals at 19.2 million tons of municipal solid waste generation in a single year, 6.6 percent of everything, and steel cans at a 70.9 percent recycling rate, one of the highest of any packaging material it measures. Steel is not a marginal recyclable that needs your help. It is a commodity with an established market and a magnet waiting for it, and a hanger's only failing is arriving by the wrong road.
Sources: American Iron and Steel Institute: steel recyclability, US EPA: Ferrous metals, material-specific data
The facility · No
Will a sorting facility recover it?
Long, thin and hooked is close to the worst possible shape for a sorting line. Hangers catch on rotating screens and wind around shafts, and the hook means several will link into a chain that has to be cut out by hand. The industry has a name for this whole class of object: tanglers. Cuyahoga County lists them together, plastic bags, film, ropes, cords and wires, and describes them wrapping around the equipment discs and wheels until they can shut down an entire materials recovery facility. It is not a trivial category either. When the Recycling Partnership surveyed its MRF working group across 37 facilities, tanglers came out as the second-ranked contaminant of the ten identified and accounted for 7 percent of the total cost of contamination on their own, counted across disposal, lost value of other recyclables, labor, equipment repair, facility downtime and staff injury. Same failure as plastic bags, different material, and the same line workers cutting it free.
Sources: CuyahogaRecycles: Dispose of Tanglers Right, The Recycling Partnership: 2017 Costs of Contamination, MRF Working Group Survey
Your curbside program · Rarely
Will your curbside program take it?
Programs exclude them near-universally and point at drop-off sites or scrap yards instead. The metal is wanted; the route through a household bin is not. What the alternatives look like varies more than the refusal does. Napa keeps hangers out of the curbside cart and asks residents to save them up with e-waste and other scrap metal for a free scheduled collection. Cuyahoga County sends them to a scrap metal yard, in the same breath as cookie tins, car parts, appliances and license plates, and notes you may get a rebate for the load. Both are describing the same underlying fact: a hanger is perfectly good scrap steel that simply must not arrive mixed into a stream sorted by machine. There is a wrinkle worth naming, because it catches people who are trying to do the right thing. A hanger refused at the curb is not being judged as waste, and the sentence that refuses it almost always names the route that accepts it. That is unusual on this site. For most items a refusal is the end of the answer; here it is a redirection, and the metal at the other end is worth money.
Sources: Napa Recycling: coat hangers, wire, CuyahogaRecycles: Aluminum Foil
What you need to do
- Keep them out of the curbside bin regardless of how metal they are
- Remove paper tubes, plastic sleeves and cardboard from the bar
- Bundle or twist a stack together so they travel as one object
- Save them up. A scrap yard trip is worth making for a bundle and not for three hangers
- Keep wooden and plastic hangers separate; only the steel ones are scrap metal
- Take the hook into account: hangers link into chains, so twist a bundle closed rather than leaving them loose in a bag
Where else it can go
Back to the dry cleaner
Most dry cleaners take clean hangers back and reuse them directly, which beats melting them down by a wide margin: no transport to a mill, no furnace, no loss. It is also the only route where the hanger stays a hanger.
Clean and unbent only, and take the sleeves and paper tubes off first.
Scrap metal yard or drop-off station
Accepted as scrap steel by weight, alongside tins, appliances and other household metal. Nothing at a scrap yard depends on a screen catching the object, which is why the shape that defeats a sorting line is irrelevant there. Cuyahoga County notes you may receive a rebate.
Worth bundling a stack together rather than making a trip for three.
Scheduled scrap collection
Some programs will come and get them. Napa asks residents to save wire hangers with e-waste and other scrap metal and book a free pickup, which removes the trip that usually stops people bothering.
Availability varies; this is a program feature rather than a general option.
Common mistakes
- Reasoning that steel is recyclable, therefore hangers go in the bin. The shape is the problem, not the metal
- Leaving the dry cleaner's plastic sleeve on
- Putting them in loose, where the hooks link several together into a chain somebody has to cut out by hand
- Assuming a refusal means the hanger is waste. Every program that refuses them names a scrap route in the same sentence, and some of those pay
- Throwing them out because the recycling bin will not take them, when steel cans recycle at nearly 71 percent and a scrap yard will weigh a bundle of hangers in with the rest