Recycling in New Zealand: the no-nonsense kerbside guide

Good news if you've moved towns recently: since February 2024, kerbside recycling rules are the same across all of New Zealand. No more guessing whether your new council takes yoghurt pots. The bad news: plenty of people are still putting things in the yellow-lid bin that contaminate whole truck loads. Here's the current state of play.

What goes in the recycling bin

The national rules are refreshingly short. Your recycling bin takes:

• Plastic bottles, trays and containers marked 1, 2 or 5 — look for the number inside the recycling triangle. Soft drink and milk bottles (1), shampoo and cleaning bottles (2), yoghurt and margarine containers (5).
• Paper and cardboard — newspapers, magazines, office paper, egg cartons and flattened boxes. Remove plastic windows and tape where practical.
• Tins, cans and empty aerosols — food tins, drink cans, and completely empty aerosol cans.
• Glass bottles and jars — in many districts glass goes in a separate crate; check your council's setup.

Everything must be empty, loosely clean and larger than a yoghurt pottle — anything smaller than about 50mm falls through the sorting machinery. Give containers a quick rinse; they don't need to sparkle.

What stays out — every time

• Plastics 3, 4, 6 and 7: that includes most meat trays, biscuit trays and take-away containers. No number at all? Rubbish bin.
• Soft plastics: bags, wrap, bubble wrap, chip packets and courier bags. These tangle the sorting machinery — see below for where they actually go.
• Lids and caps: small plastic lids fall through the sorter. Metal lids can go inside a squeezed tin can; plastic caps go to landfill or a community lid collection.
• Dirty nappies, food scraps and garden waste: obvious, but they're among the top contaminants councils report.
• Batteries, electronics and clothing: never in kerbside bins — batteries in particular cause truck fires.

Glass: the crate matters

Where councils collect glass separately — most of Auckland, Christchurch and many smaller districts — it's because colour-sorted, unbroken glass is worth real money and can be recycled endlessly here in New Zealand. Bottles and jars only: no drinking glasses, window panes, Pyrex or ceramics, which melt at different temperatures and ruin the batch. Kerbside glass also can't take broken glass, so wrap breakages and put them in the rubbish.

Food scraps: the newest bin on the block

Food scraps collections are rolling out across the country — Auckland's rukenga kai service started in 2023, and other councils are following under the national waste strategy. Scraps are turned into compost or biogas rather than producing methane in landfill. If your council hasn't started yet, a home compost bin, bokashi system or worm farm handles fruit and vege scraps well — just keep meat and dairy out of an open compost heap.

The number one mistake: wishcycling

Sorters call it "wishcycling" — tossing something in the recycling because it should be recyclable. A greasy pizza box, a plastic toy, a garden hose: none of these belong, and a contaminated bin can send a whole truck load to landfill. When in doubt, check your council's bin guide — most now have an online "what goes where" search. And if your district only offers fortnightly collections, it's all the more reason not to waste the space. BinMinder can remind you the night before each collection, whatever the cycle.