Ten things you should be recycling…but not in your kerbside bin

David and Gabby Locke and the Entire Tech team receiving their Switched on Business Award from City of Armadale Mayor and Chairperson of the South East Regional Energy Group, Ruth Butterfield. They were joined by Cr Aaron Adams (City of Gosnells / SEREG delegate), City of Melville Business Development Advisor Stuart Tomlinson and Sustainability Engagement Officer Jess Sutherland. Photo credit: City of Melville. 

They can’t go in your yellow-top bin but these items can still be recycled! Recycling reduces the need to extract and process raw materials, reducing water and energy use as well as waste.

  1. Oral care, contact lenses and cases. These items are accepted as part of TerraCycle’s free recycling programs. There are lots of drop off points across Perth, visit the TerraCycle Map to find one near you.
  2. Batteries. The most common form of hazardous waste disposed of by Australian households, batteries can be recycled! Your local council will have collection points, visit their website or give them a call if you haven’t seen a battery collection bin.
  3. Pens and pencils. TerraCycle have a dedicated recycling program for pens, pen caps, mechanical pencils, markers, marker caps, permanent markers and permanent marker caps. There are currently TerraCycle drop off points for these items at Armadale Library and the Knowledge Centre, Gosnells.
  4. CDs, DVDs and media storage. Drop off points at Armadale Library and the Knowledge Centre, Gosnells will accept these along with records, 8-track tapes, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, floppy disks, memory sticks, external hard drives and their cases.
  5. Televisions, computers and IT equipment. Total Green Recycling is a Perth-based recycling company that has e-waste collection points at a number of Officeworks stores across Perth, including East Perth, East Victoria Park, Osborne Park, O’Connor, Fremantle, Midland, Jandakot and Joondalup. Visit Total Green Recycling to find one near you.
  6. Clothes. H&M offer a garment recycling program and accept clothes and textiles from any brand in any condition. There is a collection box in every store (Perth, Joondalup, Mandurah and Cannington). The donations will then be sorted for rewear as second hand clothes, reuse as cleaning cloths or recycling into textile fibres to be used for things like insulation. 
  7. Mobile phones. Your old phone contains valuable metals that can be recycled. Mobile Muster is a federal government accredited recycling program with 3500 collection points in Telstra, Optus and Vodafone stores, libraries and council buildings. 
  8. Ink cartridges. Cartridges 4 Planet Ark is a free recycling program specifically for used printer cartridges. All inkjet cartridges and toner bottles from participating brands can be placed in a Cartridges 4 Planet Ark box in participating Officeworks, Australia Post, Harvey Norman, JB Hi-Fi or The Good Guys stores.
  9. Lightglobes. Fluorescent tubes, compact fluoros (CFLs), HIDs and metal halides all contain mercury so can’t be disposed of in your kerbside collection. Your local council will have collection points, visit their website or give them a call to find a collection point near you.
  10. Plastic shopping bags and other soft plastics. If it’s made of plastic and you can scrunch it in a ball it can be returned to Coles or Woolworths for recycling by REDCycle. You’ll find a REDCycle collection bin at the front of most stores. Accepted items include things like bread bags, pasta and rice bags, cereal box liners, plastic bags and old green reusable bags.

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