Recycling bin FAQs

Tiny shards of broken glass can get lodged in the paper and cardboard in a recycling bin. This makes the paper and cardboard less valuable and more difficult to recycle. Separating glass ensures we can recycle and reuse more of the paper, cardboard, plastics and metals from kerbside recycling bins.

Keeping glass out of your kerbside recycling bin also makes space for other recyclables so your household can recycle even more.

Plastic containers usually have a number on them inside a triangle.

This number indicates the type of plastic, NOT whether the item can be recycled. Council’s recycling processor only accepts plastics that are numbered 1, 2 and 5 inside the triangle.

All other plastics marked 3, 4, 6 & 7 must go in the landfill bin (red lid).

Cardboard containers that hold liquids are made from a composite material consisting of aluminium, plastic and paper, which is fused together. There are no facilities in Victoria to separate these materials so the different materials can be made into new products.

While they might be labelled with the recycling triangle, they go in your landfill bin (red lid).

It depends on the size of the lid, and the type of material it’s made from.

  Beer bottle caps
           Put them in the recycling bin. They are small, but magnets will pick them up off the sorting line.

  Large plastic lids
           Put these in your recycling bin. Lids larger than a credit card and stamped with the number 1, 2 or 5 inside a triangle can be recycled.

  Wine & spirit bottle screw tops
           Put these in your recycling bin. Specialist sorting equipment at the recycling facility creates a magnetic field for aluminium, so the screw tops are picked up off the sorting line.

  Small plastic lids
           Put them in your landfill bin. Lids smaller than a credit card, like from milk, juice and soft drink bottles, can get stuck and jam the sorting machines.