How to Recycle Food-Soiled Paper & Cardboard
Pizza boxes, napkins, paper towels, and food-stained cardboard. Mills reversed their position on greasy pizza boxes, while packaging labeled compostable usually is not.
Quick answer
Pizza boxes changed: shake out the food and recycle the box, which mills now accept and roughly 73 percent of the US population has a program for. If your city runs organics collection it may want the greasy box composted instead, so check first. Paper towels and napkins are never recyclable anywhere, so compost them if you can. Packaging labeled compostable is the thing to check, since 145 of 261 curbside programs, 56 percent, do not accept it at all.
- Recyclable
- Yes
- Typical value
- Recovered corrugated has real mill demand and can be recycled at least seven times. Compostable serviceware has close to none, which is why composters push back on it.
- 1Shake loose food, crusts, and liner sheets out of a pizza box, then recycle the box
- 2Tear off and compost or trash any section soaked through with grease or stuck with cheese
- 3Put paper towels, napkins, and tissues in organics collection, never in paper recycling
- 4Tear paper into smaller pieces before adding it to a pile
- 5Keep wax-coated and plastic-lined boxes out of both recycling and most compost programs
- 6Check your own program before trusting a compostable label; many facilities reject certified items
- Curbside paper and cardboard recycling (pizza boxes, food shaken out)
- Municipal organics collection (napkins, towels, greasy boxes)
- Home compost bins
- Commercial composting facilities
- Worm bins, where plain unbleached paper works as bedding
The pizza box rule reversed on the strength of one study. WestRock measured boxes in the recycling stream at roughly 1 to 2 percent grease by weight, found strength loss only becomes significant once pizza boxes reach around 20 percent of the furnish, about ten times typical, and showed cheese is hydrophilic, does not block fiber bonding, and screens out during pulping. AF&PA followed by stating there is no significant reason to prohibit post-consumer pizza boxes from the recycling stream, with member mills representing 93.6 percent of the OCC they consume accepting them. The study puts access at 73 percent of the US population, 27 percent through explicit acceptance and 46 percent implicit. Cities with organics programs often want the greasy box composted instead, including San Francisco, Seattle, and New York, while Denver asks you to split it and Portland recycles greasy but food-free boxes. Paper towels and napkins never go in recycling anywhere. Compostable serviceware is the genuine problem: BPI certification requires no intentionally added fluorinated chemicals and under 100 ppm total organic fluorine, the same threshold California set in AB 1200, but those are laboratory standards. Composters serving Oregon put it bluntly, saying certification tests compostability under conditions their facilities do not replicate, that look-alike non-compostables inevitably arrive with the real ones, and that the items leave behind little of value for the effort.
Corrugated is worth keeping in the fiber loop, since AF&PA notes it can be recycled at least seven times, and pizza boxes alone run about 3 billion boxes and 600,000 tons a year, 1.7 percent of US corrugated production. PFAS is the other half of the story. FDA completed a voluntary phase-out of grease-proofing PFAS in food packaging in February 2024, and 14 states have now enacted bans, starting with New York on December 31, 2022 and California on January 1, 2023, through Maine in 2026 and New Hampshire and New Mexico in 2027. BPI delisted roughly 2,000 products when its fluorinated-chemicals standard took effect on January 1, 2020. Even so, BioCycle found 145 of 261 curbside programs, 56 percent, do not accept compostable packaging at all, citing contamination, labeling, and PFAS concerns.
- Shred plain paper for animal bedding or worm bin bedding
- Layer cardboard for sheet mulching and weed suppression in beds
- Use corrugated as a mushroom growing substrate
- Switch to cloth napkins and towels for the portion you can
Accepted
- Pizza boxes with the food removed (recycling in most of the country)
- Grease-stained corrugated cardboard
- Paper towels and napkins (compost only)
- Uncoated paper plates (compost only)
- Coffee filters
- Food-stained kraft paper and bags
- Paper egg cartons
Not Accepted
- Paper towels, napkins, and tissues in paper recycling
- Wax-coated cardboard in recycling (some commercial composters take it)
- Plastic and poly-lined boxes and cups in either stream
- PLA-lined 'compostable' cups, which only 14 of 248 curbside programs accept
- Compostable serviceware in Boulder and Portland, which now route it to trash
- Foil-lined paperboard
Estimated value: Recovered corrugated has real mill demand and can be recycled at least seven times. Compostable serviceware has close to none, which is why composters push back on it.
Can I recycle a greasy pizza box?
In most of the country, yes, and this reversed recently. WestRock measured boxes in the recycling stream at about 1 to 2 percent grease by weight and found strength loss only matters once pizza boxes make up roughly 20 percent of the furnish. Cheese screens out during pulping. AF&PA concluded there is no significant reason to prohibit them, and about 73 percent of the US population has a program that accepts them. Shake out the food first, and tear off any section soaked through.
Should the pizza box go in recycling or compost?
It depends on whether your city runs organics collection. San Francisco, Seattle, and New York want the whole greasy box in compost. Denver asks you to recycle the clean part and discard the soiled portion. Portland recycles boxes that are greasy but free of stuck-on food and composts the rest. Where there is no organics program, recycling is the answer.
Are paper towels and napkins recyclable?
No, nowhere. Denver's exclusion list covers paper towels, napkins, tissue, paper plates, and any wet or greasy paper. They do compost well and San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland all accept food-soiled napkins and towels, though Portland excludes facial tissue. The commonly repeated warning about cleaning-product residue has no authoritative source behind it, but programs do vary, so check your local list.
Can I compost cups and containers labeled compostable?
Usually not, despite the label. BioCycle found only 14 of 248 programs accept bioplastic-coated paper such as PLA-lined cups, and 145 of 261 curbside programs reject compostable packaging entirely over contamination, labeling, and PFAS concerns. Portland refuses anything labeled compostable, biodegradable, or made from plants, and Boulder now sends compostable products to the trash. San Francisco and New York do accept them. Check your own program rather than the package.
Why do composting facilities reject BPI-certified products?
Because the certification is a laboratory standard, ASTM D6400 and related tests, and lab conditions are not facility conditions. Composters serving Oregon say certification tests compostability under conditions their facilities do not replicate, that accepting compostables means look-alike non-compostables arrive alongside them, that national organic standards bar many packaging materials from compost used on USDA Organic crops, and that these items leave behind little of value for the extra effort. Some facilities go further and require field testing in a real operation, not just lab results.
What about wax-coated produce boxes?
Keep them out of recycling. RecyclingWorks Massachusetts advises that waxed cardboard should not be collected for recycling though some commercial composting operations accept it. San Francisco composts waxed cardboard; Portland takes no waxed paper at all. Plastic and poly-coated boxes fit neither stream.
Recycling centers that accept Food-Soiled Paper & Cardboard
RecycleFind lists recycling centers that accept food-soiled paper & cardboard. Open a listing for hours, contact info, and directions.