Five golden rules to help solve your recycling dilemmas

Australia’s recycling rules can seem horrendously complicated, but fortunately they are becoming more simple.

In the meantime, here’s a brief guide to some of the golden rules of kerbside recycling, plus what to do with materials that can’t go in your recycling bin.

As the first rule above says, most papers, plastics, metals and glasses can be recycled, but there are a few exceptions and rules for special handling. To find out more, click on each material below. This will also tell you how else you can recycle the items that can’t go in your kerbside recycling bin.

Other helpful sources for recycling rules include:

Some items need special handling before they can go in kerbside recycling. These are generally either very small items, or complex/composite items.

Small items, like scraps of paper or foil, steel bottle caps or plastic bottle lids and coffee pods, can cause problems if simply placed in a recycling bin. Because they are small, they can literally fall through the cracks in sorting machines, causing damage to the machines or ending up in landfill.

Combined or composite items are complex items that contain multiple materials, such as newspapers or magazines in plastic wrap, or composite items like Pringles tubes. Automated recycling machines can cope with very small amounts of different materials, such as staples in paper, plastic windows on envelopes, paper labels on glass jars, or slight residues of food on containers. But items with multiple materials can confuse the machines and end up in the wrong category, introducing contamination.

Contamination is when things that can’t be recycled through kerbside recycling systems end up in the recycling system.

Contamination can create many problems: recyclable materials may need to be dumped in landfill; the output of recycled materials is less pure; workers at recycling facilities can be put at risk; and in some cases machinery can be damaged. All of these lead to increased costs of recycling that may be passed on to residents.

For example, glass recycling programs are designed only to process glass bottles and jars, which are crushed and then melted down and re-used. Drinking glasses, ceramics, plate glass (window panes) and oven-proof glass melt at higher temperatures than normal glass bottles and jars. When these are incorrectly placed in recycling, this tougher glass can remain solid among the melted glass, leading to impure glass products and damaged machinery.

Better technology is helping to remove contaminants during sorting. But it’s always best to get it right at the source. PlanetArk says that a good recycler’s motto is: “If in doubt, leave it out.”

Just because something can’t be recycled through kerbside collections, that doesn’t mean it can’t be recycled at all.

New channels for recycling more complex items have been pioneered by organisations such as Planet Ark and TerraCycle, as well as by local councils, industry and government under schemes such as the Australian Packaging Covenant and the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme.

Most councils have drop-off locations for larger items that can’t go in kerbside bins, such as electronics, batteries, light bulbs, chemicals and hazardous waste, as well as pickups for white goods and mattresses.

Many supermarkets in metro areas have REDcycle bins that accept soft plastics like plastic bags, soft plastic packaging, biscuit packets and trays, dry cleaning bags, and other “scrunchable” plastics.

Industry take-back programs include Fridge Buy Back, TechCollect for electronics, and ReturnMed for unwanted or expired medicines.

Some big companies now have collection points, such as Ikea which take used batteries, light bulbs, mattresses and allen keys, and Aldi which also takes used batteries.

Recycling is vital to reducing resource use and waste to landfill, and so getting it right is crucial.

* Jenni Downes is a research consultant at the Institute of Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney.

The Conversation