New instructions for recycling plastic bottle lids and metal caps have been released in time for National Recycling Week, 7-13 November.
Plastic lids can remain on empty plastic containers including milk bottles and laundry detergent bottles.
If plastic lids are larger than 5cm, such as the lid on peanut butter containers, they can go into your recycling bin loose. They do not need to be collected in another container.
Metal lids, including beer bottle tops, can be placed loose into the recycling bin as they will be picked up by the magnets at our Southern Material Recycling Facility (SMRF).
Plastic lids off 10c bottles cannot be placed loose in the recycling bin as they are smaller than 5cm diameter - please place these in the red-lid landfill bin.
Please be aware that these instructions are for City of Holdfast Bay, City of Marion and City of Onkaparinga residents whose household recyclables are processed at the SMRF.
The change in bottle lid recycling is to assist the sorting machines at the SMRF, which use ultraviolet, infrared and visible light detection to separate the plastic bottles including soft drink bottles to plastic milk containers.
This is followed by an air jet which blasts the object into its designated sorting bin.
If the bottles are full of lids, they are too heavy to be properly separated and end up in landfill rather than being recycled.
Other items which can be recycled through the yellow-lid kerbside bins include:
- Paper and cardboard
- Tin cans
- Rigid plastic bottles
- Glass bottles including wine bottles
- Aluminium cans
- Aluminium foil (rolled into the size of a tennis ball
Items to leave out of the yellow-lid recycling bins include:
- Soft plastics (which can be recycled at supermarkets or via the soft-plastics bin at the Brighton Civic Centre)
- Clothing
- Batteries (which can cause fires and should be recycled via specially marked collection boxes at supermarkets)
- Gas bottles (which can break machines)
- Needles and medical waste
- Disposable face masks (which can be recycled through specific mask-recycling boxes available at the Brighton Civic Centre or Glenelg Library).
The SMRF opened in 2021 as a joint initiative of Southern Region Waste Recycling Authority (SRWRA) - a subsidiary of the City of Holdfast Bay, City of Marion and City of Onkaparinga - and Australian recycling and resource recovery specialist Re.Group.
It recently won a national award for waste innovation.
