Recycling was shaken up by China’s trash ban. On January 1, China stopped taking 24 types of waste and recyclable items like plastic and paper from overseas. China was the biggest buyer of New Zealand’s waste and recyclables.

The change meant councils had to find other overseas buyers for recyclable waste, but that came with a whole new set of recycling guidelines for residents from each council, depending on the country they’re selling to.

It took Wellington staff their own trip to Malaysia before they discovered that “recyclable” meat trays from Wellington city were not actually being recycled, but dumped in Malaysian landfills.

The meat tray issue may be affecting other councils too, but so far the Wellington City Council was the only one that had found an issue.

Spokeswoman Victoria Barton-Chapple said nappies, needles, green waste and grass clippings were frequently put in kerbside recycling.Food contamination in plastic packaging and dirty pizza boxes are two of recycling’s biggest pitfalls. “If the contamination is bad, the recycling won’t be collected at all.” Residents could be bin stickered, or any item which made it to the recycling plant and couldn’t be recycled would be sent to the landfill, she said. But despite the pitfalls, 91 per cent of recyclable materials collected by kerbside were actually recycled, she said. “Contamination is a spectrum, in most circumstances ‘rinsed’ removes sufficient food contamination for the plastic to be recycled.”

For example, a milk bottle rinsed just once or twice for “recycling” didn’t need to be washed as thoroughly as a plastic or glass container intended for reuse, she said.

“We recommend everyone checks out our recycling directory – if the directory says no, it means no.”

Some locations have totally different items which can and can’t be recycled.

Worst offending items 

• Glass going in with co-mingled materials instead of being separated into crate
• Plastics being mixed into glass crates with glass
• Polystyrene contamination
• Food contamination in plastic packaging & pizza boxes

Do recycle 

• Newspapers and magazines
• Egg cartons
• Office paper and envelopes
• Junk mail
• Cereal boxes
• Toilet paper rolls
• Cardboard boxes, including pizza boxes (but remove pizza scraps and cheese residue)
• Brown corrugated cardboard
• Drink bottles (clean)
• Food containers (clean)
• Cleaning product containers
• Aluminium drinking cans
• Food tins
• Pet food tins (clean)
• Glass
• Glass bottles and jars (lids removed and clean)

Do not recycle

• Fly spray, spray deodorant, cream cans
• Food and liquid
• Cloth or clothing
• Bottle and jar lids
• Milk and juice cartons (can in Auckland)
• Plastic bags, bubble wrap, cling film (can at most supermarkets)
• Polystyrene
• Tin foil
• Meat trays (polystyrene and plastic – plastic meat trays cannot be recycled via Wellington kerbside collection)
• Lawn clippings and weeds, broken glass, ceramics, drinking glasses, medical and lab glass containers, window glass
• Light bulbs
• TV tubes and computer screens
• Vases and ornamental glass
• Sharp objects
• Medical syringes
• Batteries (can be recycled elsewhere)
• Paint and oil
• All types of gas bottles/cylinders

Plastic bags and ‘soft’ plastic

These items can be taken to a soft plastic recycling bin (at most supermarkets)

•    Carrier bags
•    Bread, pasta & rice bags
•    Fresh produce bags and net citrus bags
•    Frozen food bags (frozen vegetable, fries, burgers, nuggets, poultry etc.)
•    Confectionery wrap and lolly bags
•    Dairy wrappers
•    Plastic packaging around toilet paper, kitchen towels, nappies and sanitary products
•    Courier packs
•    Newspaper and magazine wrap
•    Chocolate & muesli bar wrappers and biscuit packets (wrapper only)
•    Chip packets
•    Ice cream wrappers
•    Cereal box liners
•    Recycle bubble wrap and large sheets of plastic that furniture comes wrapped in (cut into pieces the size of an A3 sheet of paper first)