Bottles by Shazari, Flickr.com

Depending on the plastic item, recycling plastics in Portland can be as easy as using your curbside roll cart, or it may involve a trip to a recycling facility. The good news is that there are plenty of places in the Portland Metro area that will take even the hardest-to-recycle plastic.

Let’s start with your curbside roll cart. Along with your newspapers, cans and scrap paper, you can toss in:

Bottles with a neck that are 6 oz or larger (this includes gallon milk jugs).

Tubs, 6 oz or larger, including margarine tubs.

Rigid flower pots, the kind you get at the nursery, 4 inches or larger, with all the dirt knocked out of them.

Buckets, 5 gallons or smaller.

That may still leave you with a lot of plastics lying around. Collect the following items separately, and when you get enough of them here are some places where you can take them for recycling:

Plastic bags — New Seasons stores, or Far West Fibers; both have multiple locations.

Rigid "clamshell" containers—Far West Fibers or New Seasons.

Styrofoam blocks (no food-related Styrofoam) — Pacific Land Clearing and Recycling (5805 NE Columbia Blvd., 503-281-1899) or Total Reclaim ( 4044 N Suttle Rd., 503-285-8777).

Polystyrene packing peanuts and other packaging material — Postal Annex or UPS stores will accept them for reuse, and so will many other mailing and shipping stores. Some of these businesses may also take peanuts made from cornstarch as well, if they are clean and dry.

Plastic containers, with the numbers 1 through 7 stamped on them — Far West Fibers and New Seasons.

Plastic lids, more than 2 inches in diameter — Far West Fibers.

Other plastics, including CDs and cassettes — Far West Fibers and Quantum Resource Recovery, (10750 SW Denney Road in Beaverton, 503-646-2427).

If you still have questions regarding plastics or any other type of recycling, call Metro’s recycling hotline at 503-234-3000, or visit their website.