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Waste in the right place

Discover which items you can dispose of in your yellow lid recycling bin and which items are better placed in your red lid general waste bin.

Did you know?

When incorrect items are placed in your yellow lid recycling bin it contaminates the collection and recovery of recycling. This means that high loads of contaminated recycling bins may get sent to landfill, wasting your recycling efforts.

To keep the recycling stream clean, only place the items indicated below into your yellow lid recycling bin and keep these items loose. The biggest contamination of the recycling stream is plastic bags and bagged recycling, DO NOT bag recycling or put soft plastics such as bags or cling wrap into the yellow lid recycling bin.

Why can’t sorting facilities open up plastic bags?

Opening up plastic bags is too dangerous for staff at the facilities, as they have been known to occasionally hold needles, chemicals and other toxic waste. The bags themselves can become tangled in sorting machinery, causing costly delays and breakdowns.

Keep your recycling loose!

You can collect your recycling inside anything as long as you tip it in loose into the bin, but most people find it easiest to use a bin, crate, box or hanging reusable bag which gets filled up, tipped out and brought back inside to use again. 

Which bin does it go in?

Item Yellow lid recycling bin Red lid general waste bin
Empty plastic bottles, milk and yogurt containers

YES

NO
Plastic bags, soft plastics and bagged recycling NO YES
Paper and cardboard YES NO
Nappies NO YES
Empty glass jars and bottles YES NO
Cans, tin and aluminum containers, empty aerosols YES NO

You can check which bin to use by reading the label on packaging.

Look for the Australasian Recycling Label for specific instructions on each packaging component.


Place items with this logo into the yellow lid recycling bin:

logo


Place items with this logo into the red lid general waste bin:

logo


Follow instructions on the label for components with any other logo.

Other items

Find out more

For more information on disposing of household waste phone Council on 8757 9000.