We are still doing weekly recycling collections, alternating between glass and other recyclables. If you need a larger bin for your other recyclables you can request a free upgrade to your yellow-lid recycling bin.

REQUEST A LARGER BIN

Yes, you can contact us to upgrade your bin to a larger size:

• Recycling bin – from a 120 litre bin to a 240 litre bin
• Glass bin – from an 80 litre bin to a 120 or 240 litre bin
• Rubbish bin – from an 80 litre bin to a 120 to a 240 litre bin (eligibility criteria applies)

You can also request a smaller glass bin.

If you live in the Abbotsford alternate collections area (formerly Abbotsford trial area), you've already been using a separate glass bin and a bin for food and green waste.

If you’d like to swap your current 47-litre glass bin or your glass crate over to an 80-litre bin, you can complete our online request form.

Request a larger bin

All residents, businesses and buildings serviced by Yarra Council should have received an information kit, including a new bin collection calendar with their new purple-lid glass bin.

We also have several initiatives and resources available for residents and businesses.

These resources include:

• Residents can request a smaller or larger bin for free.
• Residents are able to access free hard waste collections twice a year, which can include excess packaging they might have.
• Access to the Clifton Hill recycling drop-off centre 7 days per week to drop off a range of materials including kerbside recycling.
• Signage that can be downloaded and printed for bin areas with detailed information about what should be placed in each bin to help community members recycle correctly.
• Specific signage and educational bin stickers, and a change in bin infrastructure can be requested for apartments, units and townhouses with shared bins
• A number of translated materials that are available in 8 languages.
• An A to Z Waste and Recycling Guide detailing how to recycle a wide range of items.
• Information and educational signage and stickers for businesses in Yarra.
• A series of in-person information sessions which have been held across Yarra since February 2021.

We’re also working with our community to put in place new initiatives as needed.

We've developed educational materials to help apartment residents work out the correct items to put in recycling and rubbish bins.

This includes education signage that can be downloaded and printed. You can also order larger signs and bin stickers.

Find these resources and more information.

Yarra staff are available to meet with residents and property managers to discuss their individual needs and find an appropriate solution. You can contact us to organise this by emailing [email protected] or call 9205 5555.

Placing your bins in the correct position on the street makes it easy for them to be emptied. If they're not placed correctly it might not be possible for them to be collected.

Find out more about bin collection in your area to make sure they're collected.

If your bin was not collected by 4pm, please let us know by reporting a missed collection online or call us on 9205 5555.

Report a missed bin collection

You can recycle glass bottles and glass jars only by putting them in your purple-lid glass bin, but please remove all lids.

See more information on what to put in your purple-lid glass bin.

Separating glass from other recycling by using your purple-lid glass bin is now mandatory for all Yarra residents who use Yarra Council’s waste and recycling service.

This is part of the Victorian Governments state-wide policy to move all households to a 4-bin waste and recycling system by 2030.

If you find that you have no need for the glass bin (i.e. have no glass waste), you can request a bin retrieval.

Request a bin service change

Residents who have excess glass, or have opted not to have a glass bin, can drop off any glass recycling at the Clifton Hill recycling drop-off centre.

The smallest available glass bin is 80L. If you need more room for your glass bin, we can swap you over to a larger sized bin free of charge: 120-litre or 240-litre glass bin.

Request a larger or smaller bin

The standard purple-lid glass bin is 80-litres (85cm high x 45cm wide x 52cm deep).

This is the same capacity as your existing rubbish bin.

If you're in an apartment block however, you will receive a shared bin which may be a larger size such as a 120 litre bin (88cm high x 46cm wide x 48cm deep)  or a 240 litre bin (100cm high x 58cm wide x 66cm deep).

If you live in an apartment or multi-unit development that is serviced by Yarra Council, your building will also have received new shared glass-only bins.

The number of bins you have, and their size, will depend on how many people live in your building.

What you can put in your yellow-lid recycling bin has changed. Yarra only accepts items that we know can be recycled in Australia. This boosts our local industry, creates jobs and ensures we can recycle in the future.

You can still place materials such as clean paper, cardboard, plastic water bottles, metal items, milk and juice cartons (like Tetra Paks and liquid paperboard) in your yellow-lid bin.

Products such as aerosol cans as well as lots of plastics (labelled 3,4,6,7) will no longer be accepted in the recycling bin.

It’s also important that all recycling is put in loose. If your recycling is in bags, it is guaranteed to go to landfill once it reaches our processing facility.

See more information on what to put in your yellow-lid recycling bin.

Our recycling processor cannot take items that haven’t been sorted correctly, as it causes problems for the machinery and contaminates our recycling system. This could even result in a whole load of recycling being sent to landfill.

If the wrong items, including glass, are found in your yellow-lid recycling bin, a sticker will be placed on it to let you know it is contaminated (has the wrong items inside).

You may need to remove the wrong items and submit a missed bin request to arrange for it to be collected.

You can also call us at 9205 5555 and let us know your bin wasn’t picked up due to contamination.

If your bin is contaminated (has the wrong items inside), we will let you know by putting a sticker on your bin noting the item(s) that need to be removed. You’ll need to remove the item before we can empty your bin.

Once the item has been removed, you can request a missed bin collection online or give us a call on 03 9205 5555 and let us know your bin wasn’t picked up due to contamination.

If you're unsure what can and can’t go in each bin, please check our A to Z Waste and Recycling Guide.

• Squash plastic bottles (labelled 1 and 2) and containers (labelled 5) and cans
• Flatten cardboard boxes
• Scrunch foil

By flattening cardboard and other recyclables completely, you can save up to 60% of the space in your yellow-lid recycling bin.

Yarra City Council is committed to rolling out a separate bin for food and green waste as part of the Victorian Government’s push for a 4 bin system. However, this has been delayed due to impacts of coronavirus (COVID-19).

We are working towards making this happen as soon as possible.

Yarra decided to start with the glass bin rollout because there is significant strain on the recycling industry in this area.

For now, residents with garden waste should continue using Yarra’s on-call green waste collection service. If Yarra residents want to compost at home they can access discounted compost bin and worm farm options.

For a long time, Australia has relied on other countries to take our recycling.

In 2018, China placed a ban on importing recyclable materials, sending Australia’s recycling industry into crisis. In response to this, the Australian Government has placed a ban exporting recyclable papers, plastic, glass and tyres.

Yarra Council has worked towards a more sustainable recycling service since the recycling collapse in 2018.

From now on, Yarra is only accepting items that can be recycled in Australia. This will allow us to help to grow our local industry, create jobs and ensure we can recycle here into the future.

The new purple-lid glass bin allows you to keep glass separate from other recyclables in your yellow-lid recycling bin.

When glass is not separated from other recyclables, it often breaks in the collection process and sticks in other recycling such as plastic or paper, making those items harder to recycle.

Collecting glass separately helps us to improve the quality of what we collect and use what’s thrown out to make new products. The glass bin also creates a clean stream of glass that can be reused in the local markets.

We have moved to a fortnightly collection by collecting glass recycling separately, adjusting bin sizes and combinations and being flexible to the needs of individual households as well as apartments, units and townhouses. 

There are a number of advantages for fortnightly collection schedules, including that it is:

• More cost effective and allows us to roll out the new glass bin at no extra cost to ratepayers.
• Keeps the amount of rubbish and recycling vehicles on our streets to a minimum, which reduces congestion, minimises wear and tear on our roads and reduces vehicle emissions.
• Reduces the amount of bins on the street on collection days.

Most other Victorian councils have demonstrated that fortnightly collection is achievable, after the first local council in Victoria moved to fortnightly collections in 2003.

There are 79 local government areas in Victoria. Of these, 72 councils collect recycling fortnightly, and 7 collect recycling weekly. Fortnightly recycling collections were first established by a council in Victoria in 2003.

The Macedon Ranges Shire Council and City of Melbourne are two councils that along with Yarra have recently moved to fortnightly collections.

Yarra is one of only four councils in Victoria that currently offer a separate glass bin, although all other councils in Victoria will have a similar system in place by 2030. In response to the recycling crisis in Australia, the Victorian Government is rolling out a new four-bin waste and recycling system in partnership with local councils, with the goal of most households in Victoria receiving the new system by 2030.

In Tuesday 18 February 2020, Yarra Councillors voted to roll out a four-bin system that has been trialled in parts of Abbotsford since June 2019. This roll out was then delayed due to the impacts of COVID-19.

At its meeting on Tuesday 23 June 2020, Yarra Council endorsed a recommendation that:

(a) Council endorse the roll out of a glass bin only in October 2020;

(b) Council endorse a fortnightly collection for recycling and a fortnightly collection of glass only; and

(c) appropriate communications commence with the community and relevant stakeholders to prepare for an October 2020 glass bin roll out.

Unfortunately, no. Our manufacturers only want plastics 1 and 2 in the form of a bottle, which can be easily sorted and recycled back into bottles.

Each type of plastic is processed differently, melts at a different temperature and has its own specific end market.

We won't be able to recycle lids until the manufacturers use the same plastic for the lid that they use for the container.

With current technology, it is impossible to recycle different plastic types together. Plastics melt at different temperatures and must each be processed in different ways.

In the meantime, plastic lids will need to go in the rubbish bin.

Since May 2023, Yarra City Council now accepts Tetra Pak food and drink cartons as well as milk and juice cartons in our kerbside yellow-lid bin.

This is because our recycling processor now accepts these items, and also because these materials now have an end-of-life use.

Our recycling processor APR Kerbside sort and bundle the Tetra Paks and other cartons and send these all to the SaveBoard plant for recycling.

Funded by Tetra Pak, the launch of SaveBoard in Australia has allowed for the onshore recycling of these materials. SaveBoard is an endlessly circular and recyclable, low-carbon building material.

We are sorry to hear that your bins are being contaminated by others. We do know that it happens, and we are also committed to not sending contaminated material to our processor. Managing contamination means that manufacturers can use recycled material without jeopardising the quality of their product. 

While we know that it won’t solve all your problems, we have developed some stickers that can be placed on your bins. These state that you've sorted your waste correctly and ask people not to put their rubbish in. You download them here.

One step to avoiding your bin being contaminated is to always store your bin off the street, and only place it out at the kerb the night before collection. If your bin storage location is accessible from the street, we have found that some simple adjustments to bin placement can help in reducing contamination:

• Always put your red-lid rubbish bin closest to the street. Passers-by will naturally use this bin, making it harder to contaminate your recycling and glass bins.
• Store your yellow and purple-lid recycling bins with the handles facing towards the footpath.  This makes it more difficult for people passing to open the bins.
• Keep your red-lid rubbish bin with the handle facing out so that this bin is easier to use. If passers-by use your red-lid rubbish bin, it will have the least impact on contamination.