What plastics from online shopping can be recycled?
Doing a bit of online shopping? Don’t throw out that packaging! Plastic bags and many plastic shipping and packaging materials are now accepted as “Flexible Plastics” under the SK Recycles program (drop them off at your next SARCAN visit).
Accepted (drop off to SARCAN):
Bring to a SARCAN and drop off for recycling under “Flexible Plastics” (with other plastic bag-like and plastic wrapper-like packaging):
✓ Plastic Mailer Bags
✓ Plastic air pillows
✓ Bubble-lined plastic bags (NO PAPER)
What are Flexible Plastics?
Not Accepted:
✘ Bubble-lined paper mailers
If motivated, one may attempt to separate the plastic bubble sheet from the paper, and then recycle just the clean paper portion with regular paper recycling. The remaining bubble wrap sheet however will likely have too much paper and glue residues to be considered clean enough to recycle.
Otherwise these can only be reused or upcycled, or go in the garbage.
Frequently Asked:
We’ve received some inquiries about a new(er) type of “paper-padded mailer” (usually a brown paper mailer with dots of thin white protective padding between the layers of paper). It appears this specific padding is intended to be designed in a manner to separate easily from the paper sheets during the paper pulping stage of common paper recycling processes.
For communities who have joined the SK Recycles program, these items are not considered contamination at this time, so can be recycled in your blue recycling cart alongside your other recyclables.
For some common online shopping packaging types, this list published by Amazon is fairly accurate (as of June 23, 2026 as reviewed by our team).