Recycling - what to put in my yellow bin?
What you can and cannot put in your yellow lid recycling bin and how to recycle other household items.
Yellow lid bins are collected fortnightly. If you are on a collection route or for rural residents recycling material can be taken to any of Council's Waste and Recycling Centres or Community Recycling Centres.
What you CAN put in your yellow bin!
- Milk and juice cartons, including long-life milk cartons and poppers
- Clean paper products, cardboard, egg cartons and paper bags
- Glass and plastic bottles, jars and containers (Recycling codes 1 - 6 accepted)
- Cans, tins, scrunched aluminium foil and trays.
Don't bag your recycling! Soft plastics like plastic bags cannot be recycled. Recycling in plastic bags is removed and goes straight to landfill.
What you CAN'T put in your yellow bin!
- Food and garden waste
- Styrofoam trays and packaging
- Plastic bags, soft plastics packaging and cling film
- Food-soiled paper and cardboard
- Aerosol cans
- Compostable and biodegradable packaging
- Takeaway coffee cups
- Ceramics, mirrors or Pyrex/toughened glass cookware and crockery
- Clothing, other textiles and toys
- Timber and building materials
Remember – items like batteries, gas bottles, aerosols, chemicals, paint and other solvents pose a serious fire risk in both trucks and at MRFs. Take them for free to your closest Community Recycling Centre or save them for the yearly Household Chemical Collection day so they are recycled safely.
Still unsure about what you can put in your Recycling bin? Look up specific items on our handy A-Z of Recycling guide on the website OR the Bega Valley Waste App! We also have a quick printed 'how-to' guide available at our Zingel Place front counter in Bega, all shire libraries, and at each of our Waste and Recycling Centres. You can download it here.
Tips:
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Keep the lids ON your milk bottles - just squash all the air out and put the lid back on.
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Flatten large cardboard boxes, but do not jam boxes in the recycling bin – they will get stuck and it may not empty.
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Keep glass bottles whole. Do not break the glass. Broken glass should be placed in your red-lidded landfill bin.
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There is no need to rinse anything, just make sure any liquid is emptied from bottles first.
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Remove the lids from jars and bottles, and place these in the red-lidded landfill bin if smaller than credit-card size, or into the recycle bin separately if larger than credit-card size.
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Recycling goes to a Material Recovery Facility (MRF) for processing and distribution to recycling partners and businesses. You can see how recycling is sorted at a MRF by watching this short video.
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Household 240 litre yellow lid bins are provided as a standard size for recycling and are collected on a fortnightly basis. Council also has 80 litre and 360 litre yellow bins you can use - visit this page to apply to change the size or number of your bins.
DID YOU KNOW?
Many of our collection trucks can collect recycling and general waste in the one truck.
Cleanaway operate a number of ‘split trucks’, where the driver can empty the red bin in one chamber and the yellow bin in another with the push of a button. The red bin waste can be sent to landfill while the recycling is still on board.
Watch how the split truck works
How to recycle other household items
Not all household waste can be put in your kerbside bins. Many materials can be reused and recycled if processed correctly. You can recycle many common household problem waste items like paint, gas bottles, fire extinguishers, motor and cooking oils, car and household batteries, fluorescent tubes and globes and smoke detectors at our Community Recycling Centre (CRC), located at Merimbula Waste and Recycling Centre.
We also have a Mobile CRC that visits Wallagoot, Bermagui and Eden Waste and Recycling Centres on a regular basis throughout the year, AND convenient Community Recycling Stations at each Bega Valley Shire Library site where you can recycle household alkaline batteries, mobile phones and accessories, household ink cartridges and smoke detectors.
For more information, visit the Community Recycling Centre page on our website or download the Bega Valley Waste App.
© Bega Valley Shire Council 2024
Our council websites
Contact Us
- 02 6499 2222
- council@begavalley.nsw.gov.au
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Zingel Place
PO Box 492
Bega NSW 2550 -
Monday to Friday 9.00AM to 4.30PM
Administration building Zingel Place Bega
Australia -
ABN: 26 987 935 332
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