GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Amazon and fellow online retailers will dispatch packages and pouches in the millions this week as the holiday shipping rush begins. Properly disposing of those mailed materials can be more difficult than ordering them to your door. 

Cardboard boxes are pretty straightforward, as you can recycle them in your curbside can. But what about some of the other Amazon staples? If your box featured an air bag style cushion, it’s banned from the bin.

The all-paper sleeves can be thrown in the curbside bin, but their bubble-wrapped brother is a no-go. The thin plastic films like bubble wrap are not accepted in Kent County or most curbside programs. Finally, the popular all-plastic, padded sleeves are also not accepted.

So how can you get rid of them? The answer to these pesky plastic stipulations may lie at your local grocery store. Meijer locations and SpartanNash stores around West Michigan run special drop boxes to collect their own plastic bags and frequently-denied shipping materials. 

“All of our stores offer collection bins for plastic bags and plastic film. In addition to things like plastic bags, they collect plastic shipping packages. Bread bags, any sort of flexible plastic film that is clean and dry can go right into those bins and gets recycled,” said Annalise Steketee, sustainability manager at Meijer.

All of those packaging options that can’t be recycled curbside are accepted by these boxes. But if you aren’t sure, look for the How 2 Recycle label. Anything with the label can go in the Meijer drop boxes. But not everything is properly marked. 

“That label is a good indicator and there are some things that might not have those, but those air bags might not have the label but as long as you deflate the air and it doesn’t have any other food or contaminants on there, it can go in the bin,” Steketee said.

It isn’t just Meijer locations. The SpartanNash family of stores also has similar drop boxes at Family Fare, D&W and Forest Hills Foods.

“We accept produce bags, bubble wrap, plastic shipping bags/pouches, ice bags, newspaper sleeves, dry cleaning bags, sandwich bags, cereal box liners and bread bags. We are on track to recycling over 4,000 pounds of plastic year to date for this program,” wrote SpartanNash in a statement.

The SpartanNash family of stores added that it is on track to recycle more than 4,000 pounds of plastic already this year through the program.

Meijer’s program recycled more than 8 million pounds in all last year.

If you still aren’t sure about a specific item, the city of Grand Rapids has a handy search engine called the Waste Wizard that you can use and Kent County has its own Recycling & Waste Directory.