No way! All the Shires kerbside recyclables are sent to Cleanaway's Guildford Materials Recovery Facility (MRF).
Here, all items are sorted, baled, and shipped to facilities which will recycle them into new items.
Please note that ONLY paper, cardboard, glass, tins, and rigid plastics should be put in your yellow kerbside bin.
Even though soft plastics used to recyclable, they are NOT anymore. This is because they get tangled in the machinery and stop it from working.
Soft plastics are plastics which can be easily scrunched in your hand like plastic packets, wrappers, and bags.
The only plastics which should go in your recycling bin are rigid plastics like milk bottles (rinsed and lid off).
Please put your soft plastics in your general waste bin (red or green lid).
We understand that bagging your recycling may keep your bin cleaner but anything in a bag is sent to landfill.
This is because bagged recycling may contain items which cannot be recycled. Cleanaway's Guildford Materials Recovery Facility processes large quantities of recycling daily and staff do not have the time to sort through bags.
To improve recycling, please put your recyclable items in the bin loose, rinsed, and with lids off.
Not true!
Due to new plastic bans in Western Australia, takeaway coffee cups should be made from plant-based materials that look like plastic but aren't. These materials contaminate the recycling stream.
Please put these takeaway coffee cups in the general waste bin (red or green lid).
No, they can't.
These lids are often made from different types of plastic than the bottles themselves which makes recycling them tricky. They are hard to sort and may also get stuck in the machinery because they're so small.
Even when separated from the bottle, plastic bottle lids cannot go in the recycling bin. Instead, they must go in the general waste bin (red or green lid).
Alternately, these items are accepted at containers for change facilities (must be separate from bottles).
Unfortunately, they cannot. Only 5 items should go in your recycling bin. These items are:
- Paper
- Cardboard
- Steel and aluminium cans
- Rigid Plastic
- Glass
Please donate good quality textiles to charity and put damaged or worn-out textiles in the general waste bin (red or green lid).
Degradable will break down into tiny pieces of plastic over time when exposed to sunlight and heat. These tiny cause harm to the environment and living creatures (humans included) when ingested.
Biodegradable products are often just plastics that have microorganisms which help the product to break down, ultimately breaking down into microplastics. Bioplastics are biodegradable materials that come from renewable sources like plants or other biological sources.
Compostable products are made from natural materials that don't release any toxic matter when breaking down. Even though majority of these items can be composted at home (find out more about the Shires home composting rebates here), some can only be composted via industrial methods. This means that if you're not home composting, please put these items in your general waste bin (red or green lid).
No! Even though the nappy box is recyclable, the nappies themselves are not. Used nappies are unhygienic and will contaminate other recyclables.
Please put nappies in your general waste bin (red or green lid).
