Give recycling your best shot

National Recycling Week takes place each November, which means there's no better time to rethink your recycling habits at home.

Recycling is a simple and effective way to support the environment and reduce the number of items ending up in landfill. Every resident has a role to play in recycling what we use. Every item you recycle goes a long way to protecting your local environment. By choosing to recycle, you are conserving energy, saving natural resources, reducing pollution and giving materials another life when made into something new.

Last year, Council collected an impressive 81,000 tonnes of paper, cardboard, firm plastics, and metal via their household recycling bins. While this is no small feat, there are still approximately 50,000 tonnes of recyclables making their way to landfill each year. That's equivalent to the volume of over 25,000 large shipping containers!

To help get recycling sorted at your place, we've pulled together some tips to take the mystery out of the process.

1. Every bit counts

Making the effort to recycle just one or two additional items per week helps to conserve precious resources from going to landfill. Set up a recycling bin in your home office to collect paper and cardboard packaging. If you find your recycling bin is full each fortnight, you can upgrade to a larger recycling bin for free to increase your recycling capacity.

2. Remember the five kinds of items for recycling

Your Brisbane City Council yellow lid recycling bin accepts household items made from paper, cardboard, firm plastic, metal and glass. A handy tip is to look for the Australasian Recycling Label on your household products and food packaging to help you understand the correct way to recycle or dispose of items.

Understanding what to avoid putting into your recycling bin can also help build better recycling habits. Keep these items out of your recycling bin - clothing and textiles, batteries, garden waste and general waste.

3. A little residue is okay

Rinsing items before placing them in your recycling bin isn't vital, but it does help to reduce odours. The same rule applies for takeaway food containers and pizza boxes. These can be recycled even with a little bit of cheese.

4. Don't bag it - leave it loose

Plastic bags, along with other soft plastics, can't be recycled through your household recycling bin. If you use plastic bags for recyclable items, your bag ends up in landfill! So, forget the bin bag and put your recyclables straight in your household recycling bin.

Recycling - it's easy

Give recycling at home your best shot each fortnight. Every little action can make a big difference.