Request a Curbside Recycling Tote and/or Cart

Can I get free curbside recycling carts or totes?

*If you live in a single-family home in one of the following towns or townships, you have curbside recycling service. We will provide our 18-gallon, green recycling totes and/or the black-and-green rolling cart to you for FREE!**

  • Village of Alanson (We deliver your cart; pick up totes from the Village Hall.)
  • Resort Township, including Bay Harbor
  • Little Traverse Township
  • Bear Creek Township (Bay View residents: pick up totes** from Russell Hall)
  • Harbor Springs
  • Petoskey

*The township or municipality pays for the service and Emmet County operates it for them.

**Bay View is served with totes exclusively. Because of the many charming narrow roads and tight curves in the Bay View Association, we are unable to use the large curbside recycling trucks needed to empty the carts in this community.

Learn more about Curbside Recycling Service

If you are from an Apartment or Condominium Community or a Business or Institution
Each community has made different choices about whether they cover the cost of curbside recycling for apartments, condominiums, businesses and institutions. If in doubt, message us at recycle@emmetcounty.org or call 231-348-0640 and we’ll check into it for you.

Learn more about Curbside Recycling for Apartments and Businesses

Request a Tote or Cart

or call us at 231-348-0640.

Tote Lids Out-of-Stock

Curbside tote lids are out of stock indefinitely. We will be looking for funding for more lids and ordering more as soon as possible. (Our thanks go out to the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation for funding our recent free lids.) To be notified when lids are back in stock, click here. We apologize for the inconvenience!

In the meantime, here are a couple of alternatives:

  • If you have one tote lid, use it then set the lidded tote on top of your tote that lacks a lid.
  • Paper blowing away? If you don’t have one of our rolling Papers-Boxes-&-Bags carts with a bright green lid, request one here.
  • You can use another lidded container, for example a storage tote, to set out recyclables. Two caveats here:
  1. You’ll need to set your unofficial container out with at least one Emmet County Recycling cart or tote. This lets your driver know that the materials are for recycling.
  2. Your container can not be larger than the green Emmet County Recycling totes. Your driver services 300-500 stops a day, 5 days a week so handling awkward, oversized, or heavy containers puts them at risk of serious injury.

Lids are available for the latest generation of curbside recycling totes (the longer ones with four handles molded into the rim, as opposed to the older ones which are more square and have just two handles).

One lid per household is currently FREE while supplies last—thanks to funding from the Petoskey-Harbor Springs Area Community Foundation. They are available at:

The Department of Public Works Office in the County Building (downtown Petoskey)
200 Division Street, Suite G-76, Petoskey
(Entrance is on the Lake Street side of the building)
Hours: 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. weekdays

The Drop-off Center
7363 Pleasantview Road, Harbor Springs
Hours: 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. weekdays / 8:00am - 3:00pm saturdays