All That Sorting, Undone by One Plastic Bag

It's a familiar scene in many Auckland kitchens. The jam jar gets a rinse. The milk bottle gets a swish under the tap. The cereal box gets squashed flat. Ten careful minutes at the sink, doing the right thing.

Then it all goes into a plastic bag. The handles get tied in a neat knot, and the bag goes into the yellow lid bin.

And just like that, all that good work goes to waste.

We've worked alongside hundreds of Auckland residents in apartments and townhouses. The most common wrong item we find in recycling bins isn't nappies or old shoes. It's a plastic bag, usually full of perfectly good recycling.

One bag is enough to get a whole bin rejected. At the sorting plant, soft plastic wraps around the spinning machinery and jams it. Then someone has to climb in and cut it free by hand, which is slow and risky work. And no, compostable bags can't go in either.

When we showed residents a photo of a jammed sorting machine, jaws dropped. Nobody needed a lecture. They saw it, and they understood.

When we started the conversations, we found bagged recycling everywhere. Now rarely come across one. Nobody became a recycling expert overnight. One picture just made one rule stick.

Know your recycling

Yes, recycling in Auckland can feel complicated. So start with the obvious ones, clean and loose in the bin:

Cardboard and paper
Glass bottles and jars
Plastic bottles and containers numbered 1, 2 and 5
Tin and aluminium cans

Then two simple rules:

No bags. Recycling goes in loose. Not even compostable bags.
No lids. None at all, not even ice cream container lids. Small lids jam the machines, and flat ones get mistaken for paper.

Ready for the next level?

If you've got the basics sorted, take on the next step: soft plastics, lids, batteries, old electronics, polystyrene. None of these go in your bin, but most have somewhere to go. Soft plastics can go to drop-off bins at participating supermarkets and stores. Other items go to community recycling centres and special collection points.

Every clean bin means glass becomes glass again, cans become cans, and less of our whenua is buried under landfill.

So rinse the jar. Flatten the box. Then skip the bag and tip it all in loose.

Get ready for Recycling Week: 19 to 25 October. Check what goes in your bin!

Useful links:

Thanks to Auckland Council and Kaipātiki Local Board for supporting the many waste reduction initiatives!