2022 Kerbside Rubbish & Recycling Collection Schedules:
Check the link to your property's collection area on the right side of this page to see your collection day for weekly blue bag rubbish and fortnightly recycling collections.
For the three collection areas with both a Week 1 and Week 2 recycling collection (Whangamatā, Whitianga and Thames & Surrounds), if you're not sure if your property is Week 1 or 2, open our Smart Maps system, select the Rubbish and Recycling viewer and enter your property address. It will tell you which week of the fortnightly cycle we're in. Or, call us on 07 868 0200.
Kerbside rubbish or recycling not picked up?
Different bin/bag types may be collected at different times during the day at any time between 7.30am and dusk.
Before contacting our Council, please check everything on the list below:
- It is the correct collection day/week for your address?
- Was your rubbish and/or recycling put kerbside before 7.30am?
- Is the glass crate broken? Contact our Council to request a replacement.
- Is the glass crate overfill? Refer to ‘how to’ below
- Is the recycling wheelie bin closed flush? (Not overfilled)
- Is the recycling wheelie bin facing the road?
- Is the blue bag kerbside? Refer to ‘how to’ below
- Are your neighbours bags/bins still kerbside?
Note: If your bin has been stickered, this has not been collected for the reason stated on the sticker.
To raise a service request regarding your uncollected rubbish and/or recycling, please contact our Council's Customer Service team on 07 868 0200
How to put out your rubbish and recycling for Kerbside collection:
When it's Kerbside collection day in your area, put out your blue Council rubbish bag, and if it's your area's turn for recycling collection, your crate for glass bottles and jars and your wheelie bin for other recyclables - by the kerb at the side of the road.
Please don't put COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) PPE, face masks or sanitary products in your wheelie bin for recycling - they can't be recycled. Please put them securely in your rubbish bag, so they don't fall out. We can't allow our crews to have to handle this material.
What about paper towels and shredded paper?
Paper towels cannot be recycled for two main reasons:
- Paper towels, when used, get soaked and contaminated with non-recyclable materials
- While they begin as mixtures of wood, cardboard, and paper by-products, they get pounded into a pulp, which weakens and breaks down their natural fibres. Toxic additives such as glues, resins and softeners are often introduced into the paper fibres to help with strength, texture, and absorption, not to mention inks and bleach for colouring. This makes it harder to recycle the product at a later time.
Paper towels should be tossed in the compost or waste instead of the recycling bin.
You can't determine the quality of shredded paper or if it contains any coating that cannot be recycled. Shredded paper can be used for composting, but essentially needs to be disposed of with your waste.
Squash your can-crushing habits
Some of you might be a bit flattened to hear that you shouldn’t crush your aluminium cans. A crushed can will not be recognised by machinery at the recycling processing plant and will end up going to landfill.
Leaving town before your collection day?
Please put your rubbish and/or recycling out on your collection day before 7:30am on your collection day. Please don't put out your material the day before, or several days before your collection is scheduled.
This is because seagulls or roaming dogs sometimes get into the bags, especially as they ripen in the sun and start to smell, and scatter your rubbish down the street.
If you're leaving town before your collection day, please take your rubbish with you and drop it at one of our seven Refuse Transfer Stations (RTS) or at one of our 24/7 drop-off sites or portable compactors ($2 per bag of domestic rubbish for the compactors). Rubbish in blue, pre-paid Council bags can be left at the RTS for free. So can recycling.
If glass in crates is put out early, especially around New Year's Eve in some of our communities, it can be thrown and broken by vandals. Please keep it on your property until the morning of your scheduled collection.
Missed your Kerbside collection day?
Drop your blue Council rubbish bags and recycling for free at one of our seven Refuse Transfer Stations, or at one of our 24/7 drop-off sites or portable compactors ($2 per bag of domestic rubbish for the compactors).
Plastic recycling
We collect plastic types 1, 2 and 5 instead of types 1 to 7 at the Kerbside and at our Refuse Transfer Stations.
Paper, cardboard and cans/tins will still be collected as usual in wheelie bins. The change only applies to plastics.
Check our Guide to Recyling on the Coromandel for more information on what can and cannot be recycled on the Coromandel.
What are plastics 1, 2 & 5?
Most hard plastics have a number on the bottom in a triangle made of arrows. The number refers to the type of plastic. Typical examples of plastics 1 and 2 are milk bottles, drink bottles, food jars, personal cosmetics. Examples of type 5 are yoghurt containers (only recycle larger ones, the small ones fall through the sorting machinery in the recycling processing plant), ice cream containers and takeaway containers
The best way to be sure of the plastic type is to LOOK FOR THE NUMBER. If the number is not 1, 2 and 5, or if there is no number, put it in your general rubbish.
The recycle.co.nz website has good information on identifying recyclable plastics.
Why the change?
Plastics numbered 1, 2 and 5 can be recycled within New Zealand but types 3, 4, 6 and 7 have to be shipped overseas for processing and are no longer accepted by most global markets.
A number of initiatives have been investigated across New Zealand for recycling plastics 3, 4, 6 and 7, however the viability of this remains largely impractical, so these plastics will be going to landfill in New Zealand for now.
Recycling sent overseas can end up as someone else’s rubbish. Shipping our recycling overseas also incurs a large carbon cost and can be processed in countries with significantly different employment practices to New Zealand – potentially putting those workers at risk handling refuse in unsafe conditions. For these reasons, it’s best that we handle all our recycling here in New Zealand.
We are asking that people on the Coromandel avoid buying products that use non-recyclable plastic where possible, in order to lessen the amount of plastic going into landfill.
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