Our top ten tips to recycle right

It’s National Recycling Week (12-18 November). Ninety per cent of Aussies already agree that recycling is the right thing to do. On the Northern Beaches, we’re keen recyclers with landfill space savings equal to almost one million wheelie bins last financial year.

When we recycle, we’re reducing greenhouse gas, energy, water and landfill space but it can be confusing to work out what can and can’t go into the yellow or blue lidded bins.

In fact, your red bin normally contains about 15 to 20 per cent of recyclable containers and paper which could be put into your yellow or blue lid bin.

Here are our top ten tips to recycle right.

Keep plastic bags out of your recycling bin. One plastic bag can cause a whole recycling load to be rejected and sent to landfill. 

Soft plastics like bread bags, frozen fruit and veggie bags, cereal box liners, plastic bags and pasta and rice bags can be taken to your local Coles and Woolworths. Thanks to the Redcycle program, soft plastics will be turned into street furniture, playground equipment and more.

Remember to clean out all bottles and cans of leftover food and drink to make sure your recycling isn’t contaminated. All food scraps should go straight into your compost or worm farm, or into your red lidded bin.

Make sure you remove lids from containers. This is because most lids are not made from the same plastic as its container and need to be separated when they are processed.

Tear off the greasy half of pizza boxes and pop the clean side in your blue recycling bin.

Crush your cardboard boxes, cans and plastic bottles to fit them into the bin and give you more room to recycle - remember your bin lid needs to close to avoid spills and litter ending up in our lagoons and oceans.

Check the Australasian Recycling Label which tells you which bin each piece of packaging should go into. Plastic products with identification codes of 1-7 can be put in your recycling bin.

We provide free recycling bags, stickers and bin bay signs to help you sort your recycling. Pick up from any of our Customer Service Centres.

From ‘A’ - for air conditioners - to ‘Z’ - for zip lock bags - check out our alphabet of recyclable materials to see what you can do with recyclable items that can’t be processed in your kerbside bins.

If you still aren’t sure whether an item can go in your recycling bin, leave it out. Putting the wrong item in the wrong bin can contaminate all your other recycling. You can ask us by emailing [email protected]

Remember the best thing you can do is reduce waste in the first place. Check out our easy ways to reduce your waste.