Pizza boxes, soft plastics, aerosols, batteries. These are the items that cause the most confusion at bin night. This guide covers the most common household items and which bin they belong in, based on Australian council guidelines.
General waste (red lid). Greasy cardboard cannot be recycled because oil contaminates the paper fibres, and one soaked box can downgrade a whole bale of paper. The practical move: tear the box in half, recycle the clean lid, and put the greasy base in general waste. A completely clean box is fine in recycling as is.
General waste (red lid). Anything that scrunches into a ball jams sorting machinery and must not go in the yellow bin. Some supermarkets have restarted soft plastics drop offs and a few councils run kerbside trials, but unless you have one of those locally, the red bin is the correct answer. The full picture, including what happened to REDcycle and the options now, is in our soft plastics guide.
General waste (red lid). Foam is not accepted in kerbside recycling anywhere in Australia; it crumbles into beads that contaminate everything else in the truck. A growing number of transfer stations take clean packaging foam for densification, covered in our polystyrene guide. Note that many supermarket trays are now clear rigid plastic rather than foam, and those are fine in the yellow bin.
Yellow recycling, or the purple glass bin where you have one. Rinse them out; metal jar lids can stay on in most councils. If the container is an eligible drink container, every state now pays a 10 cent refund through its container deposit scheme, which recycles it at higher quality than the kerbside mix.
Never any bin, no exceptions. Crushed lithium batteries start truck and facility fires, and battery fires are now the leading cause of waste facility fires in Australia. Drop them free at the B-cycle tubs in most supermarkets, Bunnings and Officeworks, with terminals taped. Vapes and gadgets with sealed batteries follow the same rule; see the battery disposal guide.
General waste (red lid), always. No kerbside service composts or recycles nappies, including brands marketed as biodegradable, and a nappy in the yellow or green bin can get the whole load rejected. Households drowning in them can usually get a larger or extra red bin from the council; the nappy guide covers that and the odour survival tactics.
General waste (red lid). Takeaway cups are paper fused to a plastic liner, and kerbside recycling cannot separate the two. The rigid plastic lid is recyclable in most councils. Cups marked compostable only break down in commercial FOGO processing, and only if your council explicitly accepts them, so check before assuming.
FOGO (lime green lid) if you have it, otherwise general waste. Where the council runs FOGO, food scraps including meat, dairy and cooked food go in the green bin in a certified compostable liner or loose. Where the green bin is garden only, food stays in the red bin. If you also compost at home, our FOGO versus compost guide covers the split that works.
Yellow recycling when completely empty. Empty aerosols are just steel or aluminium cans. Never puncture or crush them, and if a can still has product in it, it belongs with a household chemical drop off rather than any bin; see the paint and chemicals guide for those.
General waste (red lid). Recycling glass means bottles and jars only; drinking glasses, Pyrex, window glass and crockery melt at different temperatures and ruin recycled glass batches, and broken shards injure sorting staff. Wrap breakage in newspaper, bag it, and put it in the red bin.
Yellow bin, if clean and scrunched to fist size. Loose foil fragments are too small to sort, so scrunch clean foil into a ball at least the size of a golf ball, or stuff it inside an aluminium can. Foil with baked-on food goes in general waste.
General waste, or FOGO where accepted. Used tissues and paper towel are too short-fibred and too soiled for paper recycling. Many FOGO services accept them with food scraps; garden-only green bins do not.
Never the yellow bin. Fabric tangles sorting machinery. Wearable clothes go to charity, damaged textiles to a take back program or the rag bag, and only the true remainder to general waste. The full hierarchy is in the clothes and textiles guide.
Never any bin. Anything with a plug, cord or battery is e-waste, banned from bins in several states and diverted everywhere else. Transfer stations take it free, and Officeworks accepts computers, phones and cables in store; see the e-waste guide.