Where to Recycle in Amarillo: Full Drop Off List

Recycling in Amarillo works on a drop off model rather than a curbside one for most materials, which means knowing where to take things matters more here than in cities with a blue bin. This page sorts it by material rather than by site, because that is how the question actually gets asked. Nobody wonders what a particular center accepts. They wonder where a specific pile of cardboard, or metal, or a stack of electronics is supposed to go.

The City of Amarillo operates public recycling drop off locations for common household materials. Locations, accepted materials and hours are set by the city and are worth confirming on 806-378-6813 before you load the car.

Current city drop off site addresses, accepted materials and hours: to be confirmed against amarillo.gov before this page goes live.

Two habits make drop off recycling work. Flatten cardboard, because volume is the constraint at every site. And keep materials separated in the car rather than sorting them in a windy parking lot in February.

Scrap metal is the only household material in Amarillo that reliably has value rather than a cost. Commercial scrap yards buy steel, copper, aluminum and brass by weight, and copper is worth many times what steel is.

Practical points that change what you get: separate metals rather than presenting a mixed pile, strip insulation from copper wire if the quantity justifies the time, and bring identification, since Texas requires scrap dealers to record seller details on certain transactions. Appliances count as scrap once refrigerant has been recovered, which is why appliance removal is one of the cheaper things we do.

Cardboard is the highest volume household recyclable and the easiest to get wrong, because a car full of unflattened boxes is three cars full of flattened ones. Break every box down before you leave the house.

Paper, mixed plastics and glass acceptance varies by site and shifts with commodity markets. This is the category most worth calling ahead about, because a site that took a material last year may not take it now.

Electronics are not recyclable through ordinary drop off. Televisions and monitors in particular need a certified e-waste processor because of the leaded glass and mercury inside them, and there is normally a fee by weight to accept them.

Appliances split in two. Anything with a sealed refrigerant system needs recovery by a certified technician before scrapping, which is a legal requirement rather than best practice. Everything else, a washer, a dryer, a range, is straightforward scrap steel. Our electronics disposal service covers the first category properly.

Being honest about this saves wasted trips. Broken ceramics, mirror glass, pressure treated lumber, most foam packaging, contaminated cardboard like greasy pizza boxes, and mixed material items like an office chair have no practical recycling route in Amarillo. They are landfill material and the only real choice is how they get there.

When a load is genuinely mixed, sorting it into these categories yourself can take longer than the disposal saves. That is the point at which handing the whole thing to a crew that already knows the routes makes sense.