Council is encouraging households to be lean, green recycling machines over the Christmas and New Year period, when volumes of rubbish and recycling typically increase.

Glass bottles and jars should be rinsed clean and put in the green crate, while the yellow-lidded wheelie bin is for recycling that includes hard plastics 1, 2 and 5, cardboard and paper (but not shredded paper). Soft plastics cannot be recycled in your yellow bin.

The wheelie bin with the red lid is for rubbish and items that can’t be recycled as part of the kerbside collection.

Infrastructure and Open Spaces Group Manager Neil McCann said the volume of contamination in kerbside recycling has been creeping up, with bin auditors doing their best to educate some households.

“If your recycling bin wasn’t emptied, then it’s because the audit team found items that can’t be recycled. First offenders are left educational material, but repeat offenders go on our watch list and could even lose their bins.

“Just think before you bin or recycle it. We are all trying to do our best to recycle what we can, ultimately to do our bit saving the planet but also to reduce the cost of transporting our rubbish to landfill.”

Some common problems seen at Christmas included foil and plastic wrapping paper, ribbons, bows and tinsel being put out for recycling.

“These cannot be recycled, nor can things like Christmas hams or leftover food, which we also regularly find in recycling bins at Christmas time.”

Year-round, the most frequent recycling issues are pizza boxes with leftover food in them, and lids.

“Neither of these can be recycled in kerbside collections. The pizza boxes are contaminated by the food, and the lids jam the automated sorting machine in Timaru, where our recycling is separated and processed.”

Lids can be recycled at your nearest resource recovery park, but not in kerbside bins.

Mr McCann said higher volumes of rubbish and recycling were also being seen at rural drop-off stations. “We’ve had a bit of an issue at some sites, where rubbish has been put into our bulk recycling bins. We’ve even things like an old exercise machine left behind.

“When rubbish contaminates recycling, it means the whole lot has to go to the landfill, which in turn costs ratepayers more money.”

Rubbish and recycling services over Christmas and New Year

• There is no change to kerbside rubbish and recycling collections over the Christmas and New Year holiday period, because they fall on a weekend. Please have your bins out on your usual day by 7.30am; please use your windstrap, no matter the weather.
• The Ashburton Resource Recovery Park will be closed Sunday 25 December, Monday 26 December, Tuesday 27 December, and Sunday 1 January and Monday 2 January.  Usual hours 8am-6pm weekdays, 9am-6pm Saturdays and 9am-5pm Sundays.
• The Rakaia Resource Recovery Park will be closed Monday 26 December and Monday 2 January.
• The Methven Green waste facility will be closed Sunday 25 December and Sunday 1 January.