Recycle Car Seats: What do I do with an old car seat?

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

How can we better accomplish both saving kids and the Earth at the same time? Whether old and past its expiration date or if it’s been crashed, you can recycle car seats.

Why is it important to figure out recycling for our car seats anyway?

Well, we are all required by law to use car seats for our children. Approximately 4 million babies born a year. The average child is in some stage of child restraint until they are at least 8 (by many states’ car seat laws) or older if they stay in one until they pass the 5-step seat belt fit test. That means at any given time there are millions upon millions of car seats in use.

Meaning millions of car seat head to the landfill every year because:

1. Kids outgrow car seats.
2. Car seats expire. Because of being exposed to extreme conditions like, heat and sun and freezing cold, the plastic car seats are made of may start to degrade after some years. (Expiration dates vary. Check your car seat for an expiration date. It should be on the label or stamped in the plastic.) Not to mention safety recalls that could potentially put millions of car seats out of commission at once.
3. Car seats often need to be replaced after they are involved in a crash because the stress the car seat is built to take on (on behalf of your child) weakens the safety structure of the seat.

All this equals a lot of car seats no longer being used. If they all go to the landfill, that equals big mountains of hard plastic, foam and metal parts waiting years upon years to deteriorate. These materials are not all recyclable and it’s not always easy to separate them from each other so you can’t just through the old car seat in your recycling bin.

RECYCLE CAR SEATS

According to Angelica M. Baker, Phoenix Children’s Hospital Child Safety Passenger Specialist, “Garage sales and trash cans are not the answer to unwanted, old car seats – de-manufacturing and recycling is,” Baker explains. “This is the proper way to dispose of car seats. It’s important not to throw car seats in the dump. We have seen many cases where people will pull old car seats out of dumpsters or trash cans and use them.”

Dismantling car seats does require a little work, but it’s worthwhile. It will help keep people from using unsafe seats. 

Here is a brief article posted a several years ago on Safe Kids by May Romo of Safe Kids Salt Lake County explaining her take on the issue of recycling car seats. It succinctly describes how we at Safe Ride 4 Kids feel so we’re sharing it in full. Read on…

Unfortunately, this program in Utah is no longer active. But we still like her philosophy so we looked up programs in our local community. Can we all keep reusable materials like plastic and metal out of the landfill?

FIND YOUR YOUR LOCAL SAFETY SEAT RECYCLING PROGRAMS

In Colorado, the Department of Transportation offers a recycling program for car seats. You can drop off old, expired, or damaged car seats to one of several locations around the state.

We found the Recycle Your Car Seat website which lists programs in some other states as well. If  the website doesn’t list state your state, you can search online for programs near you.

Trade in Programs

Some big box stores offer trade-in programs periodically where you can bring in your old car seat for recycling and they give you a discount on your next seat or a gift card to use in their store. Target has been helping customers recycle car seats for years. They offer a 20% discount for other baby gear in return for the used/crashed/expired seat. They work with Waste Management to collect and recycle car seats to be turned into other goods.

And Walmart started program in 2019 in association with TerraCycle. Walmart offers $30 gift cards to customers who bring in car seats for recycling.

Keep an eye out at these stores for when their next event will be. (Target’s next one is April 14-27, 2024.) They often have them in April in conjunction with Earth Day and in September in conjunction with Child Passenger Safety Week.

Plus, some car seat manufacturers offer recycling programs. You can contact the manufacturer for your car seat to see if they have a program to recycle your car seat. (see RideSafer below)

Clek, a car seat manufacturer, recently started a year-round car seat recycling program. They will recycle any brand of car seat. And they have made it super easy. Simply order a recycling kit and drop it at a local UPS store to ship back to them. There is a small fee for the service, mostly to cover shipping.

RE-USING/RECYCLING YOUR RIDESAFER

Since the original first generations of the RideSafer Travel Vest didn’t have an expiration date and some past models had an expiration date of 10 years, they can withstand a lot of use in their lives. We have a trade-up program for people who need to upgrade to the next size vest.

Don’t know what a RideSafer travel car seat is? Check it out here.

We ask that customers donate uncrashed vests to programs that take child restraints to give to low income families who would otherwise not afford them. When we have used vests or old but usable demos, we donate vests locally to WeeCycle. We will be happy to take donated small or large vests to these programs. You also can return used/old vests to the manufacturer for recycling. Contact them for details. Or you can search for a program near you.

NO RECYCLE CAR SEATS OPTION NEAR YOU?

Can’t find a place to recycle your car seat and don’t want to pay the fee for Clek to recycle your car seat? This is what you can do to help reduce waste:

• If your car seat is not expired, recalled or crashed and still complies with current safety standards, donate it to a local charity. Many hospitals will accept car seat donations.
• It’s not recommended to buy a used seat but we get it sometimes, you can’t afford new. And reselling car seats is a thing. After all, you spent big bucks on that seat, why not get a little back? Good Buy Gear has set up a buy/sell program for gently used car seats.
• If your car seat is definitely ready to go bye-bye for good:
  • Dismantle the car seat
  • Separate any parts from the car seat that cannot be reused or recycled
  • Recycle any plastic or metal that you can
  • Take any fabrics to compost or to a reuse facility

HAVE YOU LOOKED FOR A RECYCLING PROGRAM IN YOUR AREA? IF YOU KNOW OF OTHER PROGRAMS, PLEASE SHARE IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.

By Amie Durocher, Creative Director at Safe Ride 4 Kids and certified CPS Tech since 2004

Copyright 2025 Safe Ride 4 Kids. All rights reserved. You may not publish, broadcast, rewrite or redistribute this material without permission. You are welcome to link to Safe Ride 4 Kids or share on social media.

We originally published this post in April 2016. We updated the article for accuracy and comprehensiveness.