Are aerosol cans recyclable?

It depends

Only if completely empty, and only where your program accepts them. Anything with product or pressure left takes it to household hazardous waste instead. Never puncture or crush a can to empty it.

Follow it down the line

Three different questions hide inside "is this recyclable?", and the answer can change at each step.

The material · Yes

Is the material recyclable?

The can itself is steel or aluminum, and both are valuable, endlessly recyclable, and among the materials facilities most want. Steel in particular is the easiest thing in the entire waste stream to recover, because it is magnetic: millions of tons a year are pulled out of waste streams on that property alone, and North America puts 60 to 80 million tons of steel scrap back into new steel annually, at the same quality each time. The can manufacturers' own position is that aerosol cans are 100 percent recyclable. Once genuinely empty, an aerosol can is just a metal container. The complication has never been the metal. It is what may still be inside it, and that is a question about the contents and the pressure rather than about recycling at all.

Sources: Can Manufacturers Institute: aerosol and other non-food cans, American Iron and Steel Institute: Sustainability in Steel Recycling

The facility · Sometimes

Will a sorting facility recover it?

A can with propellant still in it is a pressure vessel traveling into machinery that crushes and bales. Regulators treat part-full aerosols as dangerous waste for exactly this reason. The risk is fire or a rupture inside the baler, and the residue may be flammable or toxic in its own right. Empty cans carry none of that and sort with other metal without incident. The entire difficulty sits in telling the two apart. Washington's regulator sets the test precisely, and it is a two-part test rather than a judgement call: a container holding compressed gas counts as empty when the pressure inside is equal or nearly equal to atmospheric pressure, and the contents have been completely sprayed out with minimal or no product remaining. Both halves have to be true. A can that has stopped spraying because the propellant is exhausted, while still holding product, fails the second half and is dangerous waste.

Source: Washington State Department of Ecology: aerosol cans

Your curbside program · Varies

Will your curbside program take it?

Acceptance is real but well short of universal, and it has been moving in the wrong direction. The industry's own white paper puts the current US access rate for aerosol can recycling at around 61 percent for aluminum and 62 percent for steel, so a majority of Americans do have a program that takes them. That figure fell from about 70 percent in 2016 to just above 60 percent in 2021, which is why the Can Manufacturers Institute and the Household and Commercial Products Association launched a joint initiative in 2022 aiming at an 85 percent access rate by 2030. Where cans are accepted it is empty cans only, every time. Montgomery County in Pennsylvania takes empty aerosols curbside and gives the household test in plain terms: the can is empty when you no longer hear air released as the nozzle is depressed and it feels empty when shaken. Omaha accepts empty cans that held ordinary household products, hair spray, whipped topping, air freshener, and sends anything with leftover contents to its hazardous waste facility instead. Programs differ on the small stuff, so check yours rather than generalizing: Omaha says lids and caps can stay on, which is not what every program asks for.

Sources: Montgomery County, PA: aerosols, Omaha Recycling Guide: aerosol cans, HCPA and CMI: Aerosol Recycling Initiative white paper

What you need to do

Test it: nothing sprays, no hiss, and no liquid sloshing when shaken
Do not puncture a can at home to empty or depressurize it; where this is done at all it is with a commercial puncturing device and the contents are collected as dangerous waste
Do not crush it
Check your program on the plastic cap. Omaha says lids and caps can stay on; others ask for them off. The nozzle stays on either way
If in any doubt at all, treat it as hazardous waste rather than recycling

Where else it can go

Household hazardous waste

The right destination for anything not completely empty. Most counties run collection days or a permanent drop-off site, and they will take part-full cans of paint, solvent, pesticide and the rest.

Check the schedule; many counties run collection days rather than a permanent site.

Scrap metal yard

Where curbside will not take empty cans, a scrap yard usually will, because to a scrap buyer an empty aerosol is simply light steel or aluminum by weight and none of the sorting-line objections apply.

Empty only. A scrap yard has the same objection to pressure and residue that a MRF does.

Use it up

The simplest fix, and the one that resolves the whole page. A can sprayed until nothing comes out and nothing sloshes is a recyclable metal container rather than a hazardous waste problem, so using it up is not thrift, it is the disposal step.

Common mistakes

Puncturing cans to 'make them safe', which is the dangerous thing, not the safe one
Recycling a can that still sloshes, which puts a pressurized container into a baler
Assuming spray paint and pesticide cans follow the same rules as an empty deodorant can; residue matters as much as pressure
Treating 'it stopped spraying' as 'it is empty'. The regulator's test has two halves, no pressure and no product, and a can whose propellant ran out early fails the second
Waiting for the can to tell you. Only about 29 percent of aerosol cans carry any message about how to recycle them or that they must be empty first