Are yogurt cups recyclable?
It depends
Increasingly yes, but not everywhere. Yogurt cups are #5 polypropylene, which more programmes accept every year. Rinse it, leave the foil lid off, and check your own list.
What you need to do
- Rinse it — yogurt residue contaminates and dries hard
- Take the foil lid off; it is a different material and too small to sort
- Leave the plastic overcap on the tub if there is one
- Do not stack tubs inside each other; nested containers are often missed
Why the answer isn't simple
Three different questions hide inside "is this recyclable?" — and most pages only answer one of them.
Is the material recyclable? yes
What the stuff is made of, in principle.
Yogurt and margarine tubs are polypropylene, marked #5. It is a genuinely recyclable plastic with real end markets, and it has been moving steadily from 'hard to recycle' toward routine acceptance as more facilities added the capability.
Source: APR — PP design guidance
Will a sorting facility recover it? partial
What actually happens on the line.
Rigid tubs are the right size and shape for sorting equipment to handle, so the mechanical side is not the constraint. What varies is whether a facility separates #5 into its own bale and has a buyer for it. Worth knowing that 'recyclable' on the pack reflects what is possible rather than what your local facility does — the label and the outcome are different claims, and that gap has been contested.
Source: Beyond Plastics — the push to label yogurt cups recyclable
Will your curbside program take it? varies
Local policy, which is where answers diverge.
This is one of the items where the answer has genuinely changed in recent years, and older advice is out of date. Programmes have been adding #5 rather than dropping it — Atlantic County's authority, for instance, expanded specifically to take yogurt cups. Plenty still do not. If you last checked a few years ago, check again.
Source: ACUA — expanding accepted materials to include #5 plastic
Where else it can go
Reuse as storage
Tubs are food-safe containers already. Leftovers, seed starting, small parts, paint water.
Store take-back schemes
Some brands and retailers run collection for their own tubs where curbside will not take them.
Brand-specific and patchy.
Common mistakes
- Leaving the foil lid attached
- Relying on advice from a few years ago — #5 acceptance has been expanding, not shrinking
- Reading the recyclable label as a promise about your own kerbside programme