5 tips to reduce your waste

Limiting what goes in the bins starts with what you buy:

• Opt for reusable products when you can - from cutlery and keep cups to nappies, menstrual products and continence aids.
• Avoid single-use plastic by using reusable bags and containers
• Place a ‘no junk mail’ sticker on your letterbox.
• Sign up to online statements and correspondence.
• Link into Canberra’s second-hand market – from ‘buy nothing’ groups, Gumtree, Marketplace and the many charities and op-shops.
• Reduce avoidable food waste by taking the Food Waste Challenge.

Around 12% of the landfill bin contents could be placed in the yellow recycling bin.

• Have a look at what’s going in your red bin and consider if they can be recycled.
• Here’s some tips to help you recycle right:
  • keep it simple - only recycle hard plastic bottles and containers, glass bottles and jars, steel and aluminium cans, paper and cardboard
  • keep out soft plastics
  • keep out small items - nothing smaller than a credit card into your recycling bin
  • keep it safe - nothing hazardous
  • keep it clean by rinsing or wiping out containers
  • keep it loose - don’t bag or box your recyclables.
• Flatten boxes to make the most out of the space.
• Too much household packaging? Use the free Recycling Drop Off Centres.

• Under the ACT Container Deposit Scheme (ACT CDS), you can return eligible, empty beverage containers and receive a 10-cent refund for each container.

9% of landfill bin contents in the ACT is soft plastics.

Soft plastic must not go in ACT recycling bins.

Soft plastics includes bags and packaging used for food and other items. As a rule, anything soft enough to be knotted is a soft plastic.

Please reuse plastic bags and place other soft plastics in the landfill bin.

REDcycle - soft plastic recycling - soft plastics collection program has ceased.

7% of landfill bin contents in the ACT is textiles.

• Donate your pre-loved clothes to charity if they are in good condition.
• Many used clothes and textiles such as sheets and towels could be reused, donated, mended or remade into something else.
• Textile recycling is becoming more available. Check out options in the Recyclopaedia.

Did you know that items like batteries, light bulbs, gas cylinders, phones and chargers should not go in any bin?

These items can start fires and are damaging to the environment. There are free collection points all over Canberra for hazardous and electronic waste. Check out Recyclopaedia for tips on disposing of almost anything.