Thank you for your interest in helping The ReCap Project. We accept clean medical plastic of many different kinds.
We are currently collecting polypropylene (#5) and HDPE (#2) plastic items, including needle caps, wipes tops, vial tops, pill bottle containers, needle collars and more. Please contact us if you have plastic that you are unsure if it can be collected for the project.
For a printable information sheet / flyer for your collection areas, please click below:
Have questions?
Items we currently are not collecting.
We are unable to work with flexible tubing, masks, hard plastic suction catheters, sharps, or any type of rubber, or other plastics that may possibly be contaminated or come into contact with bodily fluids.
How to Collect
In the clinics we work with, in each medication room or work area there is a small bin or tub where medical staff can put the plastic caps. After these get full, the plastic can be stored in boxes in storage areas then later sent to us. Some clinics use plastic cleaning wipe tubs (after air drying any excess cleaning fluid) to collect and send us the entire tub full of small plastics. (We will recycle the tubs too!)
To download small printable signs which you can laminate and re-use on your collection containers, click below
How to Send Us Plastic
If you are part of the Sutter Health System / PAMF, the plastic can be boxed and then sent via
Inter Office mail to Dr Ken Lin, MD, 3rd Floor Family Medicine in San Carlos. Please include your name and clinic location so we know where it came from! 🙏
Please reach out to us if you are local to organize a cap pickup on the SF Peninsula. We work with other health systems utilizing their interoffice mailing systems as well and can pickup plastic from centralized locations in the SF Peninsula Area. Other ways to send plastic is by mailing.
If you are outside our local area and are looking to donate clean plastic, please reach out to a local Precious Plastics community to see if they can accept your plastic. In our testing we have found the majority of medical plastic is polypropylene (#5) with some HDPE (#2) plastic which many non commercial recyclers can utilize.
Start a ReCap Project in your own community
Every community has the potential to keep valuable plastic out of landfills. If you’re passionate about sustainability, you can launch a local ReCap Project at a nearby hospital, clinic, pharmacy, or vaccination site. We started with a single medical office and a simple idea: collect clean, single-use medical plastics before they’re thrown away, then transform them into useful products. Today, that idea has diverted more than a million pieces of plastic from the waste stream.
Starting your own program is easier than you might think. We’ll share what we’ve learned—from setting up collection bins and working with healthcare partners to sorting plastics, processing the material, and creating finished products. Whether your goal is reducing waste, educating your community, or inspiring others to rethink plastic, we’re happy to help you get started.
Together, we can build a network of local ReCap Projects, giving plastic a second life—one community at a time.Â
Interested in starting a ReCap Project? Contact us, and we’ll help you take the first steps.