Plastic & Metal Lid Recycling
Plastic and Metal Lid Recycling
We’ve partnered up with Aotearoa NZ Made and McAuley Metals to deliver a FREE bottle top and lid recycling trial right in the heart of Wellington.
We are really happy with how our community has embraced our drop-off point. We know that you are keen recyclers, our list below gives you more guidance on what you can drop off.
What plastic items we accept:
✔️ Plastic hinge caps and screw caps lids (any colour)
✔️ Plastic milk bottle caps
✔️ Plastic contact lense packaging without foil
✔️ Yoghurt pot lids
✔️ ONLY plastics labelled 2 or 5. Please make sure your plastics are cleaned, dried AND separated before dropping them off to us.
What small metal items we accept:
✔️ Crown caps e.g. beer bottle caps
✔️ Metal screw bottle tops
✔️ Wire from sparkling wine
✔️ Metal jar lids
✔️ Ring-pull caps
What we can’t recycle:
❌ Any plastics labelled type 1, 3, 4, 6 or 7
❌ Any other small plastic items that aren’t labelled as type 2 or 5 e.g. food pouch lids, dip lids, coffee cup lids
❌ Plastic lids with a thermal seal inside (this often looks like a blue or white layer inside the lid)
❌ Plastic lids wiith waxy paper inserts (please remove if you can, we can still recycle the lid)
How it works:
Sort your clean + dry plastic 2, plastic 5, and metal lids into separate steams.
Bring them into us - Sustainability Trust, 2 Forresters Lane (off Tory Street) Wellington
McAuley Metals will collect the metal lids and plastic lids will be sent to Aotearoa NZ Made.
This is a free service for our community. If you would like to support our work, and help us expand our reuse and recycling drop-offs, please consider making a donation.
Why this is important?
Even with the best intentions, plastic and metal lids don’t always make it into the recycling pile. It’s not because they’re not recyclable, it’s because they are too small to be detected and often slip through the cracks.
Bottle caps and jar lids are not recyclable through your kerbside recycling. You can also drop your lids to the Tip Shop at the Southern Landfill.
Wellington City Council asks for lids to be removed from bottles when preparing your recycling. Issues relating to plastic lids are due to:
lids being a different type of plastic to the bottle, which when mixed together reduces the quality of the recycled material
lids being left on when contents remain in the bottle results in contamination
The lids are too small to be baled with the other plastics.
Every year, a total of 2,498 tonnes of loose plastic lids are disposed of through rubbish or recycling bins in Aotearoa/NZ. Most of this will end up in landfill.