Christchurch City Council had us doing a double take at the last lot of flyers dropped around the city.

They’re running a campaign asking locals if we’ve ‘bin good’ with our recycling. Bin good? Get a sweet gold sticker on your bin. Bin bad? You might find some recycling reading material in your letterbox and a bad sticker slapped on your bin. Just like primary school! And thanks to the council’s handy-dandy recycling app it’s just as easy. This is all to help recycling get to the right place. If a recycling truck’s haul is contaminated with too much dirty or non-recyclable stuff, the whole thing has to get dumped in landfill, which costs a truckload of money and is pretty bad for the environment. Dirty pizza boxes? Those greasy badboys don’t count as recyclable cardboard, but they can go in your green bin for composting. Same goes for paper towels, fish and chip paper, and even newspaper. And you might be surprised to learn that aerosol cans are recyclable, but cardboard milk and juice cartons must go in the red bin. So far only 58% of loads pass the bar for recycling, and if more of us are good we can get that number way up.

ccc.govt.nz