Now more than ever, your donations of household goods and money matter to many organizations helping those in our community hit hardest by the pandemic and structural inequities. As our annual Recycling Extravaganza was put on hold this year and places may not be open, we have compiled a list below of organizations accepting reusable or hard-to-recycle items with their current status to help you find a new home for things you no longer want or need.

The average person throws 68 pounds of clothing, shoes, linens and other recyclable household items in the trash each year. The disposal of electronics is the fastest-growing part of the world’s trash problem, with an estimated 50 million computers becoming obsolete annually. Every day, individuals and organizations around the globe dispose of mountains of E-Scrap, containing hazardous and toxic materials that pose significant environmental risks: CRT monitors with toxic lead oxide that can leach into the ground water; PC-related components & batteries with chromium, nickel, zinc, mercury and other heavy metals; plastic equipment housings that can release dangerous gases if incinerated.

The Reuse and Recycling sectors are here to support responsible management of our resources for the benefit of humans and the environment.

STLCityRecycles/database – A regional search database resource to find places to take your stuff. Enter the item, for example, “vinyl records” and it will show you locations on a map of various stores that may accept this item, in this case Goodwill stores. This database is managed by the City of St. Louis.

Washington University Sustainability created this post to help their students when moving out. It includes an excel document to find organizations.

List of Organizations

Almost Home –  Almost Home empowers young moms to become self-sufficient and create a better future for themselves and their children. Almost Home exists to end the cycle of poverty two generations at a time. They are in need of cash and household items. Check out their website for their wish-lists of items needed and how to contact them.

Central Paper Stock – Took over the plastic flower pot recycling program from Missouri Botanical Garden. They are not doing plastic flower pot recycling this year.

Circle of Light Associates – This nonprofit specializes in just about everything and has a huge outreach.  They also have lots of trucks and warehouse space for food and products they redistribute throughout the St. Louis Metro Area.  They redistribute millions of dollars worth of new and used products, and hundreds of thousands of pounds of food annually.  They are accepting donations and will take refrigerators, stoves, appliances, couches, furniture, food, some clothing; you name it, and they always find a home. Pick ups and drop offs depend on what the item is. Like United Way, they also have a large network of nonprofits and churches that they redistribute large quantities of products to. Contact donations@circleoflightassociates.org or Kent at (314) 560-6967. 

Crime Victim Center – We accept cell phones *most needed,* backpacks, winter items (hats, scarves, gloves, coats), and children’s toys and books. We send the cell phones to a recycling company. Contact info@supportvictims.org or (314) 289-5664 and we will make arrangements for donations. Crime Victim Center is a nonprofit organization founded in the St. Louis area in 1972. Our mission is to empower people impacted by crime to move from crisis to resiliency. The primary focus of the agency is to reduce the negative effects of crime for individuals, families, and communities in a trauma informed and holistic approach. The Crime Victim Center serves over 5,000 people impacted by crime annually within the St. Louis Metropolitan Region. 87% of our clients are victims of domestic violence. All of our services are free of charge and include advocacy, counseling, legal assistance, and community outreach. We are located in Grand Center, next to the Fox Theater; however, due to COVID-19 we are working offsite.  All services are being conducted through phone or through tele-mental health platforms. For more information call (314) 652-3623 or go to www.supportvictims.org.

EPC – EPC’s services include electronic waste recycling. Starting Monday June 1st, we will be requesting that customers who have electronics to recycle leave the items in their cars when they arrive. Please come into our showroom to see one of our sales reps. Like we always have, we’ll accept up to 3 items for free to be recycled, but do charge for Monitors, microwaves and TV’s. The price is $20 per item for anything 32 inches and smaller, and $40 for above. There is no limit on the amount of TV’s, etc. Also we will be requiring that customers wear a mask in our showroom for the safety of our employees and other customers. We also sell refurbished electronics and equipment.

Home Depot – Accepting small, spiral CFLs and rechargeable drill batteries at various STL locations. Call the location to determine if they are accepting these at their store.

Home Sweet Home – We accept donations of furnishings and household items that can help our clients set up their homes and small apartments. We have a loading dock to make your donation drop-off easy at our warehouse location. You can drop off Thursdays and Fridays between 9am-2pm only. Please wear a mask and have donations packed and easily accessible for our staff to retrieve from your vehicle. New items must be quarantined for 7 days, so donations will be accepted on a limited basis. We also have a truck available to make pickups of large furniture items on Thursdays and Fridays all-day. Pickups will be contactless and OUTSIDE ONLY. All pickup requests will be answered in the order they are received. ​The mission of Home Sweet Home is to give families a sense of pride and to improve the quality of their lives by providing basic household furnishings. Our services include pick up of donations by truck, working with case managers at partner agencies to get clients access to furniture, and delivery of new and gently-used furniture and household items to client apartments and homes. 

Free the Girls program – Providing a safe economic opportunity to women recovering from sex trafficking, Free The Girls collects gently used bras to be sold in the second-hand marketplace. Drop-off location: Chesterfield Hanesbrands @ St. Louis Premium Outlets / 18539 Outlet Boulevard, Suite 603, Chesterfield, MO 63005 / 636-778-1555. Please call to determine if they are open and still accepting donations.

Mardi Gras Beads – Check with these locations to see if they are open to accepting your beads for cleaning and reuse.

MERS Goodwill Industries – Our two outlet stores and our stores in Illinois will not open at this time. Other locations will be open for shopping and donating 7 days a week during modified hours of 10 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Donations are only accepted at Open stores. Please do not leave donations on the ground. Donors will be asked to unload their vehicle and place donations in the containers provided.  At this time we cannot accept any large items, including furniture, that won’t fit into the containers which are 40″ x 40″ x 40″. Donations will be quarantined for 72 hours before handling or selling.

Midwest Recycle Center –  Does e-waste recycling. MRC is open to the public, and can accept electronics (anything with a cord). We can accept electronics at our South County office or our Imperial office. Monday – Friday, 8:30-5:00.

Missouri Prescription Pill and Drug Disposal Program (MO P2D2) – Provides an environmentally safe alternative to disposing of medications in the landfill or sewer systems that may later negatively affect the environment. This program encourages citizens to remove their unneeded medications from their homes. This reduces access to dangerous medications for accidental or intentional misuse by children in the home. Please note that our medicine disposal drop boxes are currently suspended through early summer of 2020. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. 

Perennial – We are accepting donations during our reduced retail hours of 11-5 Thursdays and Fridays. At this time we are only accepting donations from this list on our website. Check that list for updated information. Perennial is a non-profit that teaches people creative skills to reuse materials and live a sustainable and self-sufficient life. We offer craft and DIY classes using all salvaged materials and provide free programs to women in transition, including former prisoners, survivors of domestic violence, homeless women, and more. We also sell handmade DIY kits and tools for reuse projects. Our workshop remains closed at this time, but our virtual offerings are up and running, check them out here!

ProShred St. Louis – Does residential shredding. We have contactless drop off. You can come up and ring the doorbell and we will wheel a container out to your car. Employees will unload the car and empty boxes into the container for you. You can make the payment outside. Employees will be wearing masks and gloves. Drop offs are $5/bankers box for paper, $10/hard drive. ProShred St. Louis is a locally owned and operated company in Overland that services the greater St. Louis and southern Illinois areas. We consider ourselves an information security company that provides services in secure destruction of documents, hard drives, media, and product destruction (i.e. uniforms). We are dual certified as NAID AAA and ISO 9001. We are the only company in the area that is ISO 9001 certified. We are also a certified minority owned business. Hours are M-F 8:30 am-4:30 pm. We recommend calling before coming as we do have limited staff. 314-274-9144

Refab – Deconstructs buildings and provides items for reuse to the general public. We accept MOST new and used doors, windows, cabinets, lumber, trim, solid hardwood flooring, plumbing and light fixtures, appliances, furniture and home decor, hardware, building supplies, tools, workshop equipment, office supplies, drafting supplies, bricks, countertops, lawn and garden supplies, fencing, railing, electrical supplies, fasteners, plumbing parts, and other architectural salvage. Drop off donations anytime during open hours, or contact us to schedule a free pickup. Please see our donation criteria before loading up the station wagon. They also offer job and skill training in woodworking to mill and prepare lumber for installation. Shop 140 years of St. Louis history at our 40,000 sqft warehouse store. We are located at the corner of Michigan and Gravois in Benton Park West. Find great deals on reclaimed lumber, doors, hardwood flooring, barn wood, cabinets, plumbing, light fixtures, hardware, and more! They are open to the general public by appointment only.

Remains  – Accepts clothing, household linens, books, shoes, purses, small single piece toys. Hours: Monday – Friday 8 AM – 4:30 PM

ReStore Habitat – Habitat for Humanity Saint Louis has two convenient locations open to the public featuring new and gently used home improvement products and building materials. The ReStore is dedicated to reusing and repurposing donated goods and diverting items from landfills in order to lessen our impact on the environment. Both Habitat for Humanity Saint Louis ReStore Locations will be re-opening Thursday May 28th! In this changing world we must alter a few things to keep our customers safe, but the fundamentals haven’t changed: Our ReStores still offer deeply discounted new and used home improvement goods all going to support the Habitat mission of providing affordable homeownership access to everyone in our community. Now more than ever we all deserve a safe place to call home. Please respect our staff and the policies we have put in place to keep everyone safe. All customers and Habitat staff must wear face coverings (per CDC, State, and City guidelines and recommendations), and a limited numbers of customers will be allowed in at one time. Please maintain 6-ft social distancing. All loading and unloading of purchases and donations will be self-service. All returns are temporarily suspended and holds will not be allowed. We are accepting donations in store and you can schedule a large item pick up here. Please look here for a list of acceptable items and their guidelines. Hours of operation: Wednesday – Sunday 10 am-6 pm.

Shoe Crew Water Projects – Collects usable shoes for reuse and creates clean water projects in developing countries around the world. Per the Department of the Interior, 300 Million pairs of shoes are put into landfills in the US annually. It’s estimated that 20 billion pairs of shoes are produced annually. Depending on the composition of materials used, it can take 20-50 years for shoes to decompose in a landfill. The Ethylene Vinyl Acetate, which usually makes up the midsole of most running shoes, can last for as long as 1,000 years in a landfill.
They are currently not accepting donations at this time.

St. Louis Bicycle Works – We continue to offer limited retail operations through our website and are attempting to expand this to include bicycle parts. Although their programs have all gone online, Bicycle donations are still needed! We have placed a bicycle rack in front of our building with a series of cable locks on it. You can simply drop off your bicycle donation(s) at any time and use the included locks to secure your donation. We are also continuing to accept donations at these locations as well. If you have multiple computers to donate, we are happy to arrange a bulk curbside pickup; you can email us to discuss this more at info@Bworks.org

STL H.E.L.P. – For all requests for equipment and information regarding equipment donations, please call us at (314) 240-0796. Since we were closed for six weeks we could not collect equipment donations and since opening the need for equipment has escalated tremendously.  The Drive has tentatively been set for September but that is contingent on what is going on with Covid 19. 

St. Louis Teacher’s Recycle Center – Closing center in South County and hoping to reopen in July. Other locations in Lemay and Chesterfield are open by appointment only.

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul – Only accepting donations on Wednesdays and Saturdays, 1-am – 2pm. Thrift Stores are open for shopping Monday-Saturday, 9am – 6pm. They also have donation bins at various locations throughout the St. Louis region. Locations: https://svdpstlouis.org/ways-help/donate-goods/donation-bins

Upcycle Treasure Box – We have moved into a location that is smaller for us but we are in the same building. Yes we are accepting donations Tues-Saturday 10:00-7:00 and I am Open to the public. We have added a few new items that we are taking razors and blades, swiffer pads, Gerber items, Brita filters, candles from yankee or wood wick, Chesapeake bay, Wellness dog or cat packaging, and my other regular stuff I take.

Win Warehouse – Our mission is to connect non-profit organizations with corporate excess inventory donations. WIN receives tens of millions of dollars of bulk corporate product donations each year. We sort, catalog and store the materials and make them available to other non-profit organizations. Because we do no fundraising, WIN charges our members a handling fee for each transaction, which is based on the value of the items they receive. (On average, our members save 90% off of standard retail prices.)
Throughout the COVID crisis and the accompanying stay-at-home orders, we have continued to receive product donations as an essential supply chain partner to our donors. (As we deal in bulk donations of new items, we don’t normally solicit or receive donations from the general public.) Our program model has temporarily changed in that we are allowing members to order donated items online and over the phone, and then arrange contactless pickup or delivery. During the past eight weeks, we have measured the distributions of facemasks and cleaning supplies in the hundreds of thousands. We are looking forward to once again welcoming representatives from non-profit organizations back into our lobby and showroom when we can do so safely. 

Yoga Buzz – We are still happy to collect yoga mat and yoga prop donations. The ones that are in good condition we are happy to pass along to anyone who’s started a yoga practice and is in need of a mat. The ones that are a little worse for wear we will find reuse homes for; like floor padding for pets in shelters, kneeling cushions for farmers, etc. Contact us directly at info@yogabuzz.org to schedule a drop off. Our mission is to build connections across St. Louis, on and off the mat. Our vision is to spark social change throughout individuals and communities that creates a healthy and balanced St. Louis. Our three pillars are as follows: Advocacy – Yoga Buzz encourages individuals to embrace their social responsibility in ways that strengthens the fabric of St. Louis communities; Events – Yoga Buzz events are designed to create community, wellness and opportunities to explore St. Louis in unconventional ways. During COVID19 disruptions, we continue to offer no-cost yoga and meditation resources to support our community’s personal practices on our website; and Education – Yoga Buzz strives to provide top-notch wellness education that shifts the way individuals show up in the world.

 

The Recycling on the Go Program is funded by a grant from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste Management District.