Friday was a good day for recycling.

The first commercial airline hit the skies fuelled by repurposed waste carbon, Canada started turning old fire hoses into hammocks for zoo animals and Jacinda Ardern opened an Auckland building mostly made from salvaged material.

But, when at home Kiwi’s still can’t get their recycling bins right.

Kiwis leaving plastic on tissue boxes, lids on wine bottles, food scraps in pizza boxes and putting your recycling in plastic bags, are making sure their recycling becomes contaminated and ends up as general waste.

Waste expert Nic Turner gave Three’s The Project five tips on how to handle recyclable waste:

Don’t ‘Wishcycle’

You need to know what can and cannot be recycled, because if you’re sending non-recyclable items out with your bins the whole thing becomes a waste of time.

Know your council

Different areas have different rules and it pays to check what you’re able to put in the bin. Auckland Council has a fun game for you to check if it can be recycled.

Clean your cheese

Rinse and scape off any scraps before throwing it out, bits of food can rot and contaminate waste.

Bring it home

If you’re out and about and there’s nowhere to recycle take your waste home and recycle it there rather than putting it in the bin.

Don’t recycle

It’s reduce, reuse, recycle so remember before going straight to recycling you should instead try and reduce the amount of packaging you’re using in the first place, or at least reuse it.