How to Recycle Fertilizers
Granular and liquid lawn and garden fertilizer, and combination weed-and-feed products. The distinction between them decides whether this is hazardous waste at all.
Quick answer
Plain fertilizer is mostly not hazardous waste, and some programs will not take it: King County states that solid fertilizers containing no pesticides can go in the garbage. Weed-and-feed is different, because the pesticide in it makes it household hazardous waste. Use it up or pass it on first, and keep all of it out of storm drains, which discharge untreated.
- Recyclable
- Not curbside
- 1Check the label for a pesticide active ingredient, which is what separates the two routes
- 2Use plain fertilizer up on your own lawn or garden according to the label rate
- 3Offer surplus to a neighbour, community garden, or gardening group
- 4Take weed-and-feed and any pesticide-containing product to household hazardous waste
- 5Check locally before binning plain fertilizer, since programs differ on whether they want it
- 6Keep bags dry and closed, since fertilizer cakes and degrades once damp
- 7Sweep spilled granules off driveways and paths back onto grass rather than hosing them away
- 8Never put fertilizer, or the water you rinse a spreader with, into a storm drain
- Your own lawn and garden, applied at label rates, which is the intended disposal
- Neighbours, community gardens, and gardening groups
- Household hazardous waste facilities, for weed-and-feed and pesticide-containing products
- Regular trash for plain solid fertilizer where local rules allow it
This is the one material in the category that often is not hazardous waste, and saying so saves people a trip. King County's guidance is explicit that solid fertilizers with no pesticides can go in the garbage, that professional grade fertilizers are not accepted, that weed-and-feed is accepted as household hazardous waste, and that fertilizer containers should not be recycled. Practice is not uniform, though, and some regional programs do list fertilizer as household hazardous waste, so check yours rather than assuming either way. On storage, ammonium nitrate is a strong oxidizer rather than something that burns on its own, and the federal advisories about it are written for bulk facility storage rather than a partly used bag in a garage, so keep it dry and away from fuels and organics without treating a lawn bag as an explosion risk.
The damage from fertilizer happens through water rather than through disposal. Nitrogen and phosphorus running off lawns feed algae blooms that strip oxygen from lakes and rivers, and EPA's point about stormwater is the one to remember: it flows to the water body with no opportunity for soil, plants, or a treatment facility to filter out pollutants first. That makes sweeping granules off hard surfaces and applying at label rates more consequential than anything you do with the leftover bag. Compost and slow-release organic amendments reduce both the runoff and the leftover problem.
- Compost and slow-release organic amendments
- Soil testing so you apply only what the soil needs
- Giving surplus to a community garden
- Grasscycling, which returns nitrogen without a bag
Not Accepted
- Weed-and-feed and other pesticide-containing products in the trash
- Professional and agricultural grade fertilizers at household collection sites
- Fertilizer containers in curbside recycling
- Any fertilizer washed or swept into a storm drain
- Herbicide active ingredients in weed-and-feed products
- Ammonium nitrate, a strong oxidizer that should be kept dry and away from fuels
- Soluble nitrogen and phosphorus, the drivers of algae blooms in runoff
- Iron and micronutrient salts, which can be toxic to pets in quantity
Recycling centers that accept Fertilizers
RecycleFind lists recycling centers that accept fertilizers. Open a listing for hours, contact info, and directions.