Recycling centers in Olympia

The City of Olympia's Saturday Drop-off Site, open from Spring to Fall, offers free scrap metal and recycling drop-off, with yard waste accepted for a small fee. Operating from March 1 to November 22, 2025, on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 1000 10th Ave, SE Olympia, WA 98501, the site accepts recyclables like paper, cardboard, aluminum, plastic, glass, and various yard debris such as branches, lumber scraps, garden trimmings, and sod (with dirt removed). Scrap metal items like car parts, fencing, tools, and more are also welcome. However, certain items like beauty bark, kitchen waste, noxious weeds, painted lumber, appliances, batteries, tires, and hazardous fluids are not accepted. Specific restrictions apply to items like engines, fluids, propane cylinders, tanks, and transmissions, which must be drained or prepared accordingly. Visitors can access additional options when the drop-off site is closed, including yard debris disposal at the Thurston County Waste Recovery Center or signing up for collection services.

Summit Auto Wrecking opened its auto recycling yard on South Bay Road in Olympia in 2014 as a division of Summit Towing, which has served the local market since 2000. The facility has handled similar work for 75 years. The yard no longer sells parts. It buys cars, SUVs, pickups, and box trucks for cash, running or not, and sends flatbed trucks for same-day removal across Thurston, Lewis, Pierce, and Mason Counties, including Lacey, Tumwater, Chehalis, and Centralia. Staff disassemble each vehicle, drain the fluids, and sell the metal for remelting, while hazardous materials go to government-sanctioned facilities. Offers reflect pickup distance, year, make, and model, condition, and the current scrap metal price. The office is open weekdays, 8 am to 5 pm, and Spanish is spoken.

Thurston County's Waste and Recovery Center (WARC) is at 2420 Hogum Bay Road NE in Lacey. Weekday hours are 7:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. and weekend hours are 8:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Use the north entrance. Clean, separated recyclables are free. Cooking-oil collection at HazoHouse and plastic-foam recycling are suspended.