Setting up a Community or Organisation Small Recycling Point

We love community centres and organisations who want to reduce waste!

There are several community centres around the region who have set up collection points where they consolidate items to drop to us. We’ve put together some information to get you started.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Details of all our collections are here. We don’t recommend collecting batteries or e-waste due to health and safety issues.

  • Most of our recycling and reuse services are free; there is a charge for some e-waste items and car seats. For pricing details, see here.

  • Recycling needs to be separated by category; in particular: 

    • Plastic lids/Taupoki kirihou

    • Metal lids/ Taupoki mētara - this includes wine bottle tops, beer bottle crowns, and metal jar lids. 

    • Metal items/ Tūhanga mētara iti**  

    • Curtains/ Ārai** - good quality, mould-free pre-loved curtains; fabric rolls or large offcuts of fabric; tracks and hooks; rolls of white fabric suitable for lining. More details are here.

    *Please note that items like metal and curtains soon get heavy and bulky; think about the space you have available and how often you can drop off to Te Aro Zero Waste. 

  • To make your trip efficient and to save time doing any subsequent sorting, we recommend you have clearly labelled jars/boxes/bins/bags to collect the different items for recycling.

    This helps eliminate contamination, and makes it easier to empty collections into our labelled bins.

  • Simply pop into Te Aro Zero Waste during opening hours (Wednesday to Saturday, 10am – 4pm) to drop off your recycling. 

    We can’t offer a collection service at this time. To save time and mileage, we recommend seeing if there is another organisation nearby to share collections with.

    We also recommend waiting and bringing in a larger amount rather than making multiple small trips.

  • Use this link to download our suite of A5 recycling signs.

  • We sure can! We have the Circular Wellington directory map. Submit updates via the page.

  • There are some other locations across Wellington already, so you might not even need to set one up.

    Please check with them first to find out which recycling services they offer.

    If we’ve missed one, get in touch and let us know!

  • Get in touch with us on info@tearozerowaste.org.nz

Hear about the Ngaio Crofton Downs Residents’ Association Recycling Point

“Our recycling drop-offs have become quite a community event, with people of all ages and family groups dropping by! 

Our regular monthly recycling collection time is a chance for residents to pop in and drop items into different buckets for the different recycling collections. It’s simple to set up, appreciated by everyone, and makes it easy to then transport the collections to Sustainability Trust. 

We get a lot of comments about how handy it is for our residents to drop off here instead of having to go to the city with a small amount of recycling. We also get to help lots of people who aren’t sure where to start and what’s recyclable.  

We publicise through our website and Facebook, and constantly stress the need to separate the items, particularly the plastic tops, so that dropping it off is a quick and simple task. A typical collection will see 50 people pass by and dropping off around 30kg of plastics and metal caps, batteries etc for recycling. 

We are starting to see collections coming in from groups who organize themselves to feed into our collection – local businesses and groups from well outside our area. 

Most of what we collect goes straight to Sustainability Trust, to keep things simple. But the recycling days are proving so successful that we are starting to branch out and schedule other collections such as e-waste and to feed into proprietary coffee pod recycling programmes. 

Our collection days are a joint effort with the local Residents’ Association and church. We both wanted an activity that would interest all of our residents, have a nice community feel, and get us started on a bigger programme of becoming carbon neutral- this is it!”

- Ian Turk, Executive Member, Ngaio Crofton Downs Going Carbon Neutral.