You can’t put these items in your recycling bin, but don’t throw them away!

It’s National Recycling Week, and it’s the perfect opportunity to start thinking about the amount of waste your household puts into landfill.

While some things can’t go into your recycling bins, they can be reused or recycled in other ways!

These 14 common household items don’t need to end up in landfill:

Mobile phones and other technological goods (e-waste): companies such as Officeworks and most phone retailers can recycle old devices. Initiatives such as Emeals can pick up e-waste from your home, recycle them and donate meals to those in need for each booking made.Corks: you can put these into your compost as they’re made from the bark of oak trees. They’re also great to reuse in craft projects –look for inspiration on Pinterest.Eye glasses: donate them to charity stores, specific optometrists or Lions Recycle for Sight Australia foundation. Plastic bags: and other soft plastics such as salad bags, chip packets or zip-lock bags can be taken to your local Coles or Woolworths and put in the REDcycle bin. Check out the full list of accepted items hereFood scraps: instead of putting them in the red bin, use food scraps in your compost bin or worm farm. It’s great for your garden and will save you money on compost and fertiliser at the same time. If you attend a composting workshop you will not only learn how to get the most from your composting but you will also receive a voucher for a free compost bin or worm farm.Napkins and paper towels: can also go in your compost bin! Make sure they are in smaller quantities as they take longer to breakdown than food or garden scraps.Disposable coffee cups including biodegradable cups: Although it may look like they can go into the blue paper recycling bin, the inside of the takeaway cups is lined with plastic. Biodegradable versions have an additive that helps them break up in landfill. Sadly both need to go into the red landfill bin. However, the plastic lids of the cup can go in the yellow bin!Loose small items such as soy sauce fish containers: try to avoid using soy fish containers as they often end up as litter. You can add them into your yellow bin if you collect the small items and put them inside a larger plastic container. For small lids, loosely screw them back on the container and pop it all in the recycling bin together.Spiral-bound notebooks: While the paper can go in your blue recycling bin, any plastic covers and the metal spirals needs to be removed first.Clothes and other textile material: donate old clothes to charity shops if possible, otherwise use as rags for cleaning around the house. Clean cotton scraps can also be used to make beeswax wraps!Mirrors: the type of glass used in mirrors cannot be recycled. Where possible, give away, donate or sell your old mirrors. Broken mirrors need to be securely wrapped and tied before being disposed of in the red landfill bin.Cosmetics: TerraCycle have launched a recycling program to collect empty product packaging and give them a second life. Make sure any excess product gets placed in the red landfill bin and not down the drain.Dirty pizza boxes: parts of cardboard takeaway containers soiled with food or grease need to go in your red-lidded landfill bin, or torn into small pieces and added to your compost. The clean parts can go in the blue-lidded bin once the food had been removed.Polystyrene packaging and cups: Even though some polystyrene have a recycling symbol, they cannot be recycled in our yellow-lidded bin. Best to avoid these items as much as possible.

Have an item you needs to dispose of responsibly but don’t know how? Check out our A – Z Guide to Recycling, Reuse and Disposal.