Plastic & metal lid recycling
Plastic and metal lid recycling
We partner with The Packaging Forum and Macaulay Metals to deliver a FREE bottle top and lid recycling right in the heart of Wellington.
We are really happy with how our community has embraced our drop-off points. We know that you are keen recyclers, our list below gives you more guidance on what you can drop off.
What plastic items we accept:
✔️ All plastic caps and screw caps lids
✔️ Ice cream container lids
✔️ Plastic lids do not need to be sorted by number
✔️We can now accept unnumbered plastic lids
What metal lids we accept:
✔️ All metal caps and lids
✔️ Metal screw bottle tops
✔️ Wire from sparkling wine
✔️ Metal jar lids
✔️ Ring-pull caps
✔️ Food tin lids
✔️We can accept small plastics that are not lids which are labelled and separated into #2 and #5 only. Please separate these items from your lids. We have separate bins for these items. E.g contact lens cases, pill pots, detergent scoops, single use sauce pottles etc.
What we can’t recycle:
❌ Any large plastics labelled type 1, 3, 4, 6 or 7
❌ Any other small plastic items that aren’t labelled as type 2 or 5 e.g. food pouch lids, dip lids, coffee cup lids
❌ Soft plastics - this is available at local supermarkets
How it works:
Clean and dry plastic lids and metal lids into separate steams.
Separate non-lid items into type #2 and #5 separate streams.
Bring them into us - Te Aro Zero Waste, 2 Forresters Lane (off Tory Street) Wellington
Macaulay Metals will collect the metal lids and plastic lids will be sent to The Packaging Forum. Plastic non-lids #2 and #5 go to Aotearoa NZ Made.
This is a free service for our community. If you would like to support our work, and help us expand our reuse and recycling drop-offs, please consider making a donation.
Why this is important?
Lids can’t be put in kerbside recycling.
Only food and drink tins and cans; glass bottles and jars; paper and cardboard and plastic bottles, trays and containers that are numbered 1, 2 and 5 can go in your kerbside recycling.
It’s not because they’re not recyclable; issues relating to plastic lids are due to:
they fall though the machinery at material recycling centres
lids being a different type of plastic to the bottle, which when mixed together reduces the quality of the recycled material
lids being left on when contents remain in the bottle results in contamination
The lids are too small to be baled with the other plastics.
Every year, a total of 2,498 tonnes of loose plastic lids are disposed of through rubbish or recycling bins in Aotearoa/NZ. Most of this will end up in landfill.