What you can put in your recycling

Items you can put in your roadside recycling bin

• Glass bottles and glass jars (empty and clean).
• Tin, steel and aluminium cans (empty and clean).
• Plastic bottles (grades 1, 2 and 5) from your kitchen, bathroom and laundry.
• Plastic food containers (grades 1, 2 and 5).
• Newspapers, magazines, and advertising mail.
• Paper, cardboard including empty pizza boxes, egg cartons and window envelopes.

If you live on Aotea / Great Barrier Island, you need to flatten and securely bundle or bag your paper and cardboard items and place them next to your crate.

Get a free recycling sticker from your local library

The sticker shows what you can and cannot put in your recycling bin.

Visit Auckland Libraries for locations and hours.

Before you recycle

• Empty and rinse all recyclables and place them loose in your roadside recycling bin.
• Take lids off all bottles and containers and put them in your rubbish bin.
• Containers or packaging must be more than 5cm at their widest point and smaller than 4L (except Aotea / Great Barrier Island where containers must be no larger than 5L).
• Remove bubble wrap, polystyrene or plastic packaging from cardboard boxes – but tape and labels can remain.
• Flat paper and cardboard items must be larger than 10cm x 14cm.

Items you cannot put in your recycling

• Bagged recycling or rubbish.
• Soft plastic packaging.
• Small lids from bottles and jars.
• Flat lids from ice cream containers, margarine, takeaway containers.
• Food waste.
• Clothing, shoes and bedding.
• Medical waste (including face masks).
• Garden waste.
• Building waste.
• Chemicals and hazardous waste.
• Nappies and sanitary products.
• Empty aerosol cans.
• Tetra Pak ® and paperboard for liquids (milk and juice cartons).
• Cookware, Pyrex ® and drinking glasses.
• Window glass and mirror glass.
• Light bulbs, fluorescent tubes and lamps, including Compact Fluorescent Lamps – they contain toxic mercury.
• Electronic and electrical items.
• Batteries – lithium batteries can explode and have been known to cause fires in recycling trucks.
• Gas bottles.
• Polystyrene packaging.
• Aluminium foil and trays.

To find out what to do with items that cannot go in your recycling bin, visit How to get rid of unwanted items.

To learn about recycling plastic, visit Waste Nothing.

Recycling made easy publication

Recycling made easy – translated documents