It's true, pizza boxes can be recycled!

Scrape off any excess cheese, pull out those stray olives, pineapple pieces and crusts, then throw the empty box in your blue-lidded recycling bin!

Visit Council's recyclables collection webpage to learn more.

All empty rigid plastic bottles and containers from your kitchen, bathroom and laundry can go in your blue-lidded recycling bin. This includes items such as biscuit trays (not the outer wrapper), yoghurt containers, drink bottles, berry punnets and sauce bottles. See examples of accepted items

Flexible, soft plastics such as plastic bags, lolly packets or cling wrap can’t go in your recycling bin.

Very small plastic items, even if a rigid plastic like the sushi fish, can't go in your recycling bin.

Visit Council's recyclables collection webpage to learn more.

The scrunch test is a great way to test if a plastic is hard or soft. Scrunch your plastic item in your hand. If you can scrunch it into a ball in your fist, it is a soft plastic. Soft, flexible plastics like chip packets, bread bags, pasta packets, yoghurt pouches and plastic bags belong in your general waste bin.

Hard, rigid plastics, such as milk bottles, yoghurt containers and berry punnets can go in your blue-lidded recycling bin.

The codes you sometimes see on plastic containers are not used to decide what can go in your recycling bin. These voluntary industry codes indicate what type of plastic resin is used in the product. They are no longer used to indicate if something can be placed in your recycling bin, as sometimes a code represents both accepted and not accepted plastics. There are also plastics that don’t have a code, but are still recyclable.

Visit Council's recyclables collection webpage to learn more.

Did you know old household batteries cannot go in any of your kerbside bins? They can cause fires in your bins and in the trucks that collect them. They can also leak toxic substances into the environment.

You can recycle your old household batteries at drop-off points in Maroondah:

• Council’s recycling station at Realm in Ringwood
• One of the B-cycle battery recycling locations in Maroondah
• One of Council’s E-waste + More collection events in May and October each year
• Participating retailers in Maroondah

Here are some tips for safely recycling your old household batteries, including AA, AAA, C, D and 9V batteries:

• Tape each end of your old batteries using clear sticky tape. This prevents sparking and reduces the risk of fire.
• Button batteries should be taped on all sides. This also acts as a safety measure if a child tries to swallow one.

Find out more about battery recycling.

False - drinking glasses cannot go in your blue-lidded recycling bin.

Broken household glass, such drinking glasses, window pane glass, glass vases and other glassware cannot go in your recycling bin. These glass items belong in your general waste bin.

Only packaging glass can go in your recycling bin. Packaging glass is a glass bottle or jar that has packaged food or a liquid. Some examples include an olive oil bottle, a soft drink bottle, a vegemite jar, a pickles jar.

You can leave metal lids on glass bottles and jars, as machinery at the recycling facility are able to separate, sort and recover them. Plastic lids on glass jars (e.g. a vegemite jar) need to be removed and place into your recycling bin separately.

Glassware and pane glass have different properties to recyclable glass bottles and jars. For example, they melt and cool at different temperatures, so when mixed together in the glass recycling process, non-recyclable glass can cause a number of impurities such as cracks and bubbles in the newly recycled glass.

Your recycling just needs to be empty of food or liquids before being recycled. A small amount of residue is fine, such as inside a peanut butter jar.

If you can give your recyclables a quick rinse before recycling them, this can keep your bin a bit cleaner. Use some leftover dishwashing water to be water wise.

Scrape or empty leftover food scraps into your FOGO bin before recycling the container or jar.

For more recycling tips, visit Council's website.

Please place recycling loose into your blue-lidded recycling bin.

If you've had takeaway or food delivered, you need to sort out the items into the correct bin as some of this takeaway packaging isn't recyclable.

Cardboard boxes, paper bags, plastic bottles, glass bottles and aluminium cans can go in your recycling bin.

Straws, receipts, napkins, disposable plastic cutlery, disposable coffee cups and sauce sachets go in your general waste bin.

All food scraps from takeaway can go into your FOGO bin.

Visit our website for more information on what can go in what bin.

Polystyrene can be recycled, but not through your kerbside waste services - it needs to be taken to a specialty recycler.

You can bring it to a free Council e-waste and more collection event, which are held in May and October each year.

At these events, the polystyrene is collected by a local company Foamex, located in Bayswater North. It's extremely important that the polystyrene is clean and free of any contamination. The polystyrene is recycled by Foamex into a wide variety of products.

Residents can also drop off polystyrene to the Foamex Bayswater North location or one of their other two locations at any time of the year. Please visit the Foamex website before visiting.

You can place polystyrene in your general waste bin or out in your hard waste collection, but it will not be recycled through either service. It is important to contain polystyrene correctly to avoid breakage and the creation of litter.

• If placing in your general waste bin, please contain polystyrene in a plastic bag.
• If placing out for collection in hard waste, please contain polystyrene in a cardboard box.

Please break up your large cardboard boxes into smaller pieces!

Large boxes can get jammed in your recycling bin if not broken down first. You can even flatten or tear smaller boxes to help create more space in your recycling bin. Please make sure all boxes are empty and there are no additional recyclables placed in a box - place all recycling items loose into your blue-lidded recycling bin.

Please do not overfill your bin as this can lead to spillage and create litter problems. Ensure your bin lid remains closed. For more information on how to present your materials for recycling, visit our recyclables collection webpage.

You can leave metal lids on glass bottles and jars, as machinery at the Material Recovery Facility are able to separate, sort and recover them.

Plastic lids on glass jars (e.g. a vegemite jar) need to be removed and placed into the recycling bin separately.

Bottles and jars are to be emptied but they don’t have to be squeaky clean.

Head to our recyclables collection webpage for more recycling tips.