"Hard to recycle" plastics are not going to be collected in Hamilton City Council's yellow recycling bins from February 1, 2024. Photo / Hamilton City Council
"Hard to recycle" plastics are not going to be collected in Hamilton City Council's yellow recycling bins from February 1, 2024. Photo / Hamilton City Council
Councils across New Zealand will only be accepting plastics 1, 2 and 5 in kerbside recycling bins come February 2024.
This is a change from what most Waikato councils, including Hamilton City Council, have previously accepted, which were plastics 1 through 7.
This change was part of the Ministry for the Environment’s Standardising Kerbside strategy, which required all councils to collect the same items in kerbside recycling.
The change would also impact those who take recycling to the Lincoln Street Resource Recovery Centre.
Plastics with numbers 1, 2 and 5, would still accompany paper, cardboard, clean cans, and tins in kerbside recycling bins. Those recyclables could be made into new products over and over again and supported a circular economy, where products don’t get thrown away.
Glass would continue to be collected in the blue/green glass crate as normal.
Plastics 3, 4, 6, and 7 were hard to recycle and there were limited recycling options for them in New Zealand or overseas. Those plastics made up just 5 per cent of all kerbside recycling.
The Soft Plastics Recycling Scheme would continue to be available for soft plastics, like plastic bags, from nine selected Countdown and The Warehouse stores in Hamilton.
The council’s Sustainable Resource Recovery Unit director Tania Hermann said the national strategy aimed to make recycling easy and more effective.
“Wherever you are in the country, you won’t have to wonder what can and can’t go into kerbside recycling.
“While this change is necessary as part of the national strategy, recycling properly is just the right thing to do.”
Compliance officers, or ‘bin cops’, check the contents of Hamiltonians’ recycling bins every week, as they are placed on the kerbside for collection.
The officers leave a yellow tag as a warning, or a red tag, which means the bin won’t be collected until the non-recyclables were removed. Those items included nappies and sanitary items, batteries, food or green waste, textiles, and liquids.
Residents who continued to recycle hard-to-recycle plastics 3, 4, 6, and 7 may see orange warning tags on their bins as a reminder these are no longer recyclable. An orange tag won’t prevent the bin from being collected.
What can and cannot be collected in Hamilton yellow lidded recycling bins from February 1.
The best way for residents to identify recyclable plastics was to check the numbers found on the bottom of many plastic products.
Hermann said she knew it was not always easy to tell which plastic items are 1, 2 and 5 just by looking at them and some plastics have recycling numbers that can be hard to see.
“As a council, we can’t change how big the numbers are or influence manufacturers to stop making hard-to-recycle products.
“However, we report back to Government often, with ways we think recycling can be made easier. Part of that feedback has fed into the Government’s Standardising Kerbside strategy.
“You can do your part to recycle right, by buying plastics with a recycling number 1, 2 and 5 on them or look for reusable alternatives to all the plastics you buy. Recycling is great, but there are other things we can do, such as reuse, reduce and refuse before we recycle.”
Hermann said if you can’t see a recycling symbol or it’s too hard to read, place it into the red-lidded kerbside rubbish bin.
Examples of plastics 1, 2 and 5: milk, soft drink and juice bottles, large yoghurt containers, 2L hard ice cream containers, cream cheese, sour cream and cottage cheese containers, some dip containers, and some tomato, BBQ, and mustard squeeze bottles. It also includes meat trays and some takeaway containers. Rinse all recycling before putting it into the yellow-lidded kerbside recycling bin.
Examples of plastics 3, 4, 6 and 7: small yoghurt/sour cream pottles, styrofoam, PVC pipes, polystyrene, biscuit and cracker trays, pill packets, some dip containers, soft plastics (plastics you can scrunch in your hand such as biscuit and cracker bags and trays, packaging from bread, rice, packaged vegetables and fruit, shiny gift wrap) and some tomato sauce, mustard and BBQ squeeze bottles.
