Cleanliness: Rinse containers to remove any residue or food.

Separation: Separate materials into their respective categories (paper, plastic, glass, metal) for easier recycling.

Small contamination: Labels on containers are fine. On windowed envelopes, the plastic is fine to remain. Our recycling facility can handle them.

Too small: It can’t handle small lids or bread tags. Put those things inside a larger container made of the same material. i.e. Push a plastic lid inside a milk bottle so it gets recycled correctly. Scrunch foil up to the size of a golf ball so the lasers detect its material and send it to the right place for recycling.

Clean First: It’s best to clean food containers before recycling to prevent contamination. Light residues are acceptable, but heavily soiled items might not be recyclable.
Example: a stiff plastic tray that has had meat on it can be lightly rinsed and put in the yellow bin. Remove soft plastic.

Common Non-Recyclables: Items like plastic bags, styrofoam, greasy pizza boxes, and certain types of plastic packaging that are not labeled for recycling all end up in landfill.

Mixed Materials: Mixed materials are almost impossible to recycle unless they are very valuable. If your item is not valuable and is made of mixed material please question yourself about buying these costly landfill items in future and consider an alternative. Cheap items really do end up costing the earth.

If your item is valuable try to disassemble or separate the materials if possible, or research your specific item such as ‘mobile phone recycling’ for advice.

Consider giving it to charity: Find your local charity store. Phone ahead to ensure your item is likely to be accepted.

Northern Beaches Buy Swap Sell: Sell your items on this facebook group or at many other online marketplaces such as eBay or Gumtree.

Northern Beaches Freebies: Your items may be of interest Your items may be of interest to people who can save it from landfill.

Whirl Recycling: take electronics and appliances and they separate the parts and recycle them. Find out when they are next in your area.

Take it to Kimbriki: consider delivering any bikes, toys or furniture to the reuse centre at Kimbriki. Sort the rest of your items into metal, wood, e-waste and general waste (landfill) as they have special sites to drop your items into these waste streams.

Special Collection Services: Contact Northern Beaches Council to arrange a collection service for your ‘bulky goods’. There is no recycling with this service. It gets collected in the next month when the bulk truck is in your area and your things are immediately crushed and dropped off to landfill.

Ikea sell a bookcase or shelf every 5 seconds. Most Aussies don’t know how to repair broken furniture and prefer buying cheap and new ones, spending over $1.5 billion on furniture annually. In an era of fast furniture, roughly 85% of the cheap furniture we buy ends up on kerbs and are sent directly to landfills. 



According to the World Economic Forum, 13.5 million pieces of disposed IKEA furniture can be recycled or reused but they have not been. So Ikea is trialling a furniture recycle program. This isn’t the answer to our problems since the mass-production still requires forests to be felled and carbon to be used – but at last they are starting a trial to treat and recover materials they produced and profited from. Phone your local store and ask about their furniture recycling program.

It’s important that you don’t put batteries in landfill. Batteries contain toxic elements and leachate contaminates the soil. To prevent hazardous waste in landfills please drop your batteries at specialised drop-off points listed in the council recycling map, which includes stores like Aldi, Officeworks, Battery World in Brookvale and Bunnings.

Challenges with Mixed Materials: Mixed materials are almost impossible to recycle unless they are very valuable. Try to disassemble or separate the materials if possible, or research your specific item such as ‘mobile phone recycling’ for advice.

If your item is not valuable and is made of mixed material please question yourself about an alternative to buying these costly landfill items in future.