What do you do with the used shop rags after you're done cleaning your chain? I know it's not good to let them pile up in an open bin due to potential fire hazard, but I hate the idea of throwing them away.
Does anyone here launder theirs? If so, please share your technique!
I am a big fan of Citra Solv products when it comes to grease. Soak the rags in a citrasolv concentrate +water bath and then throw them into your washing machine with any laundry detergent or Citrasolv laundry detergent. Depending on how greasy they are you might not even need to soak them in the concentrate first.. just washing them might work if you use a strong detergent.
Unless your rags are significantly less grimy than mine, I don't suggest washing them.
Although it is nice to re-use rags, generally that take a lot of resources to get clean. I used to have to use a separate washing machine, strong solvents, and multiple washes, to get greasy rags clean (although I was working on cars, not bikes), because washing rags will leave a nasty mess in your washer.
Now I generally cut up old t-shirts for rags, so the rags are already on their second use.
...Maybe skipdip is just cleaner than I am...?
I toss mine out. I use old socks, t-shirts, towels full of holes or stained beyond the point where I'd want house guests drying their hands on them.
My justification for tossing them out mirrors Nick's logic. The rags are on their second life, so why waste a half cup of detergent, dozens of gallons of (heated?) water, and who knows what else on the water treatment end of things for all that grease/oil I just put down the drain. Even if I do all this, I could still mess up whatever I put in the machine afterwards? (though I guess I'd get a bunch of new rags...)
My rags are all cotton (relatively renewable), so they decompose in the landfill and hopefully the chemicals on them don't end up in the river.
I used to buy boxes of rags that were just scrap cuts of white cotton t-shirts. Then, I realized I could just cut up my old t-shirts.
I once cut up an entire mini-wardrobe left behind by an ex-girlfriend to make very colorful, and very soft, rags...
Correction dwillen: nothing decomposes in a landfill.
I'm going to take this opportunity (slightly off-topic) to advocate ditching paper towels entirely in your life and switching to rags (from cut up clothing, or bought if you really want). Bike rags may be hard to wash, but from other uses it's pretty dead simple, and a lot better than going through so many rolls of paper.
my rags never seem to get super-awfully filthy, and although they are already on their second life I feel that they are worthy of washing. I never considered the possibility of ruining what I washed after washing greasy rags.. maybe I'm just too clean like Nick said 
As for wasting water and detergent, that is surely an understandable cause for concern, as is throwing stuff in a landfill though. There is a lot of bad runoff that comes from landfills as well as a lot of leaching into groundwater. Is it possible that tainted water is better dealt with when it runs into the sewage system? I don't really know. It's all a great big mess! Much of what most humans do is destructive.
But like alnilam said, 'nothing' decomposes in a landfill. You can find food items that are perfectly preserved from years and years ago! Nature can't keep up with us. I don't know a whole lot about garbology, but I would like to study it more someday.
Anyway @Pseudacris...maybe you could just use the flammable rags to fuel a fire instead. Heat your house or something. Ohhh no then we release particles into the atmosphere!!!! My head hurts.
***Bike PGH greasy rag burning bonfire?***
Jane, what rags? You never do any bicycle maintenance. :p
Hm. You are putting oil into the wastewater, but (a) it's already mixed up with a surfactant and (b) it can't even come close to the volume of runoff from the city streets. So, I dunno. Use fewer fossil products on your bike, I guess. In the grand scheme of things, I'm sure you come out way ahead by using a bike instead of a car.
I definitely would NOT recommend burning the rags. If you are concerned about them being a fire hazard, they make disposal cans specifically for oily rags.
Thanks for the tips, everyone. I think I will use'em then lose 'em:
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Allegheny County has hazardous waste collections, as an option.
i use old t shirts, and then i throw them out. there is no shortage of old t shirts that are on their way to a landfill anyway, so you just divert them to your shop for a minute and get them all greasy first.
there is however, talk of future wars for water, so until i start reading about wars for old t shirts, i'll just throw them out.
It's pretty cheap to get a linen service like we use at the shop. They show up every couple weeks with clean towels and you don't have to worry about throwing them away. If a few people that lived near each other went in on it I'd imagine it would be around $4 a month or so.
