The Clear Lake / Ellington Airport Recycling Center sits at 246 Loop Road in the far south-east of Houston, and its selling point is availability. It opens seven days a week from 8 in the morning until 8 at night — by a wide margin the longest hours of any City of Houston drop-off site, and the only one that reliably opens on both a Sunday and a Monday.
For anyone whose week does not accommodate a Tuesday-to-Saturday trip, that alone makes it the practical choice. The neighbourhood depositories shut Monday and Sunday; Westpark shuts Sunday and Monday; Kingwood only opens at weekends. This one does not close.
It is a self-service recycling drop-off, so there is nothing to pay and nobody to pay it to.
Identification is straightforward for the same reason it is straightforward at Westpark: recycling-only visits need a current Texas-issued ID and nothing further. The two-document rule the city applies to bulk and tree waste does not bite here.
The four-visits-a-month allowance applies across all City of Houston drop-off facilities collectively.
One caution about the address. Older directories still list this site as Highway 3 at Brantly Avenue. The city's own recycling-centres page now gives 246 Loop Road, Houston 77034, and that is the address to navigate to.
Bulky junk, tree waste and household hazardous material are not handled here — those belong at a depository or an Environmental Service Center.