Can wood hangers be recycled?
Sometimes. When I think of recycling wood, I think of barn wood, or basketball court floors. But those are larger planks of wood that can easily be repurposed into furniture, flooring or decor. Wood products that are small and thin like a hanger are hard to repurpose or remake into something else. So generally, a wood hanger cannot be recycled. But a wood hanger that is still intact can be re-used in a few different ways.
- It can be refinished. You can remove the existing finish and apply a new one to freshen it up.
- It can be donated to be used in thrift stores, local charities, etc.
- It can be repurposed into a scarf holder, jewelry holder, etc.
If the wood hanger is not intact and is unusable, there are still ways for the wood to be repurposed.
- It can be chipped and added as mulch to your garden.
- It can be burned as kindling in a wood fireplace.
Can plastic hangers be recycled?
In theory, most plastics can be recycled. So surely you can recycle a plastic hanger. In practice? Unfortunately, very few plastic hangers are recycled. In order to recycle them you need to know what kind of plastic it is, so it can be placed with other items of the same kind of plastic. But if your hanger doesn’t explicitly say what kind of plastic it is, then it will be sorted and sent to the landfill. As overuse of plastics is becoming a big problem in our world, we advise to avoid plastic hangers
Can velvet hangers by recycled?
That is a big no. Velvet hangers are plastic with plastic fibers (flocking) glued to it. The type of plastic used in the hanger and the type of plastic used in the flocking are different. So in order to recycle them a center would need to separate the velvet from the structure of the hanger, which is nearly impossible to do. So those also find their way to the landfill.
Can wire hangers be recycled?
Once again, unfortunately no. Most scrap metal recyclers will want to know what kind of metal the wire hanger is, if you don’t know, they won’t take it. Also, because of the unusual shape of a hanger, they would want to unwind it and straighten the wires before running them through their machines. Which the labor cost to do so is not worth the cost of the metal recovered, so financially it doesn’t make sense to a recycling company.
Happy Hanging
Love,
Chelsea
