Every January, a specific object appears in Chicago suburb garages: a knotted mass of light strands, roughly a third of which no longer work, that nobody wants to keep and nobody knows how to get rid of.

Most people eventually throw it in the trash. Some people throw it in the curbside recycling bin, which is worse. If you want to recycle old Christmas lights properly in the Chicago suburbs, there's a right way to do it — and it's genuinely worth the twenty minutes, because a strand of lights is close to pure recoverable material.

Why they can't go in your curbside bin

This is the part almost nobody knows, and it matters.

Light strands are what recycling facilities call "tanglers." Long, flexible, wire-based items wrap around the spinning shafts and screens inside a materials recovery facility. When that happens, the line gets shut down and someone physically cuts the material off the equipment — the same problem garden hoses, extension cords, and Christmas lights all cause.

So a strand in your blue cart doesn't get recycled. It creates a jam, costs the facility labor, and ends up landfilled anyway. Wishcycling here does active harm.

What's actually inside a strand

The reason to bother is that these are valuable once separated:

  • Copper wire, which is the bulk of the weight and the reason scrap yards will take them at all.
  • PVC insulation, recoverable in the right stream.
  • Brass and other metals in the sockets and plug.
  • Glass and plastic from the bulbs.

Weight for weight, a bundle of dead strands is a better scrap candidate than most things in the garage.

Where to take them in the Chicago suburbs

Options, roughly in order of convenience:

Municipal and township collection programs. A number of Chicago suburb villages, townships, and park districts run holiday light recycling drives from roughly late November through January or February, often with a drop box at village hall, the public works building, or the library. Check your own village's website or public works page — these are seasonal and the locations move year to year, so a current check beats a remembered address.

County-level recycling programs. DuPage, Cook, Lake, Kane, and Will counties each run household recycling and hazardous-waste facilities or events, and several accept string lights among their electronics and metals streams. County solid-waste department pages are the reliable source.

Scrap metal yards. Many will accept light strands as insulated copper wire — sometimes even paying a small amount by weight. Call ahead, because acceptance varies by yard.

Hardware and big-box store take-backs. Some retailers run seasonal light-recycling promotions, occasionally with a coupon incentive on new LED strands. These come and go by year.

Mail-in recycling programs. Several specialty recyclers accept mailed light strands. You pay shipping, which only makes sense for a large accumulation.

One consistent note across all of them: programs are seasonal and details change annually. Verify before you drive.

How to prep them

  • Untangle enough to bundle. Loose coils, not one giant knot.
  • Leave the bulbs in. Most programs and scrap yards want the whole strand; removing bulbs isn't required and isn't worth the hours.
  • Don't cut the wire. Whole strands are easier to process, and some scrap yards price cut wire differently.
  • Separate LED from incandescent only if asked. Most programs take both together.

The bigger question: why do you have a pile at all?

Here's the part worth sitting with. The reason a Chicago suburbs garage accumulates dead strands is that the homeowner owns the lights.

Retail strands are consumables. They fail on a predictable schedule — a couple of seasons of Illinois freeze-thaw, some UV, one bad kink in a cold strand, and a section goes dark permanently. So the cycle runs: buy, use, partially fail, replace, keep the failed ones "just in case," and repeat until a bin fills. Then every January the accumulation problem lands on you along with the untangling, the storage, and eventually the disposal question.

That cycle only exists because of ownership. In a full-service model, the company supplies the material, installs it, maintains it, removes it in January, and stores it at their own facility — which means failed strands are their inventory problem, not a bin in your garage. It's a small thing that turns out to be a large thing over a decade. Our post on who provides the lights in professional holiday lighting covers how that model works.

While you're at it: incandescent to LED

If you're clearing out a pile, this is the natural moment to stop replacing like with like. Incandescent strands draw many times the power of equivalent LED, run hot, and are the usual reason an exterior breaker trips in December on older homes in Naperville, Elmhurst, or Geneva. LED runs cool, holds its color, and puts far more display on a single circuit.

If you'd rather skip the buying decision entirely, professional christmas light installation arrives as commercial-grade LED by default — nothing for you to purchase, and nothing to dispose of later.

FAQ

Can you put Christmas lights in the recycling bin?

No. Light strands are "tanglers" that wrap around sorting equipment at recycling facilities and force line shutdowns, so they're pulled and landfilled. They need a dedicated drop-off program or a scrap yard instead.

Where can I recycle Christmas lights in the Chicago suburbs?

Check your village or township website first — many run seasonal drop boxes from late November into winter — then your county's solid waste program, and local scrap metal yards, which often take strands as insulated copper wire.

Are old Christmas lights worth any money?

A little, by weight, at a scrap yard that accepts insulated copper wire. A single strand is negligible; a decade's accumulation of them is worth a stop if you're already going.

Should I recycle working incandescent strands or keep using them?

If they're still working, the decision is about power draw rather than disposal — incandescent uses many times the electricity of LED and runs hot. Many households retire working incandescent strands early for exactly that reason.

Or stop owning them altogether

The tidiest solution to a garage full of dead strands is not having any. Twinkle Bros Lighting LLC supplies the commercial-grade LED, designs the display, installs it, repairs it under a full-season guarantee, removes every strand in January, and stores it at our facility — fully insured, with the whole estimate handled online. No bins, no untangling, no January disposal question. Book your October install date: request a free holiday lighting quote or call (708) 316-4569.