Fort Bend County's recycling centre at 1200 Blume Road in Rosenberg is the regional drop-off for the whole county, and it handles two things at once: everyday recyclables and household hazardous waste. It sits behind the county animal shelter and shares the same entrance, so watch for the turn. The office line is 281-633-7581.

Opening is unusual enough to be worth checking twice. Eight in the morning to four in the afternoon on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Shut all day Wednesday, shut Sunday, and shut on county holidays. This is a residents-only service — waste from businesses, commercial operations and agriculture is turned away, and fees are worked out from container size rather than how much you managed to cram inside.

Plenty goes in free: plastics numbered one to seven, glass food and drink containers in any colour, clean paper and cardboard, used motor oil and filters, cooking oil, antifreeze, non-alkaline batteries and textiles. The priced items are where it pays to plan. Appliances are five dollars without refrigerant and ten with. Televisions and monitors run ten dollars under twenty inches, fifteen between twenty and thirty-two, and thirty above that. Small electronics under five pounds are a dollar; heavier ones five.

Tyres are two dollars dismounted and ten mounted for cars, SUVs, pickups, quad bikes and mowers, rising to ten and twenty for lorry tyres, with off-road and agricultural rubber charged at thirty cents a pound. Household hazardous waste and latex paint cost a dollar a gallon for the first fourteen gallons in a calendar year and five dollars a gallon after that. Fluorescent tubes and CFLs are fifty cents each; bagged household or yard waste is five dollars a bag. Bring cash, a cheque or a credit card — debit cards are refused.