Street containers for a quick drop-off, recycling centers for bulky loads. Filter by material to save time.
This map has two categories from OpenStreetMap: Container (yellow/green street container, usually 24/7, for a single material group — bottle bank, paper bank, clothes bin) and Recycling Center (fenced site with staff, limited hours but accepts everything, including e-waste, bulky waste, construction debris, cooking oil, green waste). The material filter shows only locations accepting the chosen material — per OSM tags recycling:glass=yes, recycling:batteries=yes, etc. For centers it's worth calling ahead — some only accept residents of their municipality.
Data comes from OpenStreetMap, loaded live via the Overpass API. Drop-off points are tagged amenity=recycling together with recycling_type=container|centre and one or more recycling:<material>=yes tags. Since OSM is community-maintained, some containers are documented in more detail than others. Missing data? Add it on openstreetmap.org — the entry appears here within minutes. Municipal waste services often contribute directly.
recycling:bulky_waste=yes).Street containers: one material each — glass (by color), paper, clothes, sometimes plastic packaging, batteries. Recycling centers: all of the above plus e-waste, bulky waste, construction debris, wood, scrap metal, cooking oil, green waste, hazardous waste. The popup on this map shows a concrete list of accepted materials per site — based on the OSM tags recycling:<material>=yes.
Never in regular waste — pollutants and fire risk. Three options: (1) Recycling center takes any size for free. (2) Large retailers (≥ 400 m² floor space in EU, big-box in US) accept small devices (≤ 25 cm) without a purchase. (3) When buying new, the seller must take back the old device 1:1.
Typically municipal waste services (e.g. BSR Berlin, Veolia, SUEZ, Republic Services, Waste Management Inc., council waste departments) or their contractors. Clothes containers are often run by charities (Red Cross, Caritas, Humana, Goodwill) or private recyclers. The operator is shown in the popup when it's on OSM.
Glass is crushed, melted, and turned into new bottles — recycling rate ~85 %. Paper becomes fiber pulp and new paper (rate ~75 %). Plastic is trickier: clean-sorted plastic gets recycled (PET, HDPE), mixed plastic is often burned for energy. E-waste is dismantled into precious metals (gold, copper, rare earths) and hazardous substances. The recycling rate varies widely by country.
This map runs entirely in your browser. Your location is never sent to our servers — it's only used to center the map. Map data comes from OpenStreetMap.
All points come from OpenStreetMap and are fetched live via the Overpass API. Something missing or wrong? Anyone can fix it directly on OpenStreetMap — the map will reflect the change shortly after.
As circular economy grows in importance, what actually gets recycled depends less on individual goodwill and more on the availability of collection infrastructure. This map relies entirely on OpenStreetMap, picking up the amenity=recycling tag. It distinguishes two basic types: collection containers (typical for glass, paper, textiles — small street-side boxes) and full recycling centres (larger drop-off sites with staff and opening hours, marked by recycling_type=centre). Which materials are accepted we read from the OSM sub-tags recycling:glass, recycling:paper, recycling:plastic, recycling:clothes, recycling:batteries, recycling:electrical_appliances and several more — you can filter precisely and see only containers that actually take your waste.
From a consumption-planning angle, this matters because many materials in the wrong bin tank their recycling rate: glass in residual waste is lost; batteries in household waste are a fire risk; small electronics in residual waste lose valuable metals. With one click the map tells you whether the nearest container accepts recycling:batteries=yes — many Aldi, Lidl and dm branches do, sparing you the trip to a recycling centre. Textile containers (recycling:clothes=yes) are also a growing topic, because fast fashion is about to trigger collection mandates in every city.
From a mapper perspective, recycling infrastructure is one of the most rewarding areas for OSM contributions, because municipal websites are often outdated, hard to search and not embedded in any map. Every new container you add improves the data base of this map and thousands of other OSM-driven apps. It is low-friction civic participation — and at the same time concrete help for every neighbour with the same problem.
Examples where the map is the right workshop for you:
glass, sharpen the location — the nearest container appears 200 m away, with opening hours and any quiet-hour notes.batteries filter — many collection boxes are inside supermarkets and drug stores and are mapped in OSM. That way batteries do not end up in household waste.clothes filter. The map shows both charity containers and commercial collection points — check operator in the popup if that matters to you.All data come from OpenStreetMap and are loaded live from the visible map via the Overpass API. The database sits under the Open Database License (ODbL). If you spot an unmapped glass or paper container, contributing is quick: create an OSM account, open the iD editor, drop a node, add amenity=recycling and one recycling:*=yes per accepted material (e.g. recycling:glass=yes, recycling:paper=yes, recycling:clothes=yes). For full recycling centres also add recycling_type=centre and opening_hours. Your entry then helps this map and every OSM-based app worldwide.
OSM is crowdsourced: in Central Europe container coverage is very good, in rural regions outside the EU it can be patchy. Material categories also differ by country: what is "yellow sack" in Germany is "yellow bin" in Austria and sorted differently in Italy. recycling:plastic_packaging therefore is not equally precise everywhere. Closing times at recycling centres can shift short-term (lunch breaks, heatwave closures) — the opening_hours in OSM reflect the standard, not the daily case. When in doubt: check the municipal or waste operator's website shortly before driving over.
amenity=recycling entry — it will appear here at the next map refresh.electrical_appliances and read the popup, because the specific container must actually accept the material.