Top 5 contaminants we find in recycling

Our team hand-sorts everything, so when items arrive clean and sorted, it saves time and helps more resources stay in circulation.

Even the best recyclers can have a few things slip through, so we chatted with our crew to find out the top five things that often sneak into recycling bins and what to do with them instead.

  1. Soft plastics

Soft plastics like your bread bags, cereal liners, chip packets, etc, often sneak into the recycling bin. They can’t be recycled as they get tangled in machinery and cause major slowdowns.

Best home: rubbish bin.

  1. Unwashed containers                                                                                    

A quick rinse makes a big difference. When jars, tins or bottles still have food or liquid inside, it can spoil other recyclables and slow things down for our team. 

Tip: Wash plastic milk bottles with warm water, then squeeze them flat — you’ll fit more in your recycling bin.

  1. Food remnants

Pizza is great in your stomach, but not in the recycling bin! Leftover food makes things messy (and smelly) and harder to process, so keeping items clean really helps us out.

Best home for food scraps: food waste can go straight into the compost.

  1. Paper towels and tissues

Easy mistake! Even though they sound recyclable, paper towels and tissues are designed to break down quickly and can’t be turned into new paper. Plus, no one wants to deal with dirty tissues.

Best home: compost, if you can.

  1. Receipts and thermal paper

Receipts are printed on a type of coated paper that can’t be recycled. They’re one of those small but sneaky items best kept out of your recycle bin.

Best home: rubbish bin.

Bonus: single-use coffee cups 

These ones trick a lot of people – they look like cardboard but have a plastic lining, so they can’t go in the recycling.

Best home: rubbish bin. Bringing your own reusable cup helps cut down waste (and often gets you a discount too).

single use coffee cups

Thanks for caring about what goes in your bin. Clean recycling keeps your space smelling fresh, your area tidy and helps more of what you collect get recycled.
If you’re ever unsure what belongs in your bin, we’ve created some handy posters for our recycling customers to share with their teams. Just get in touch and we’ll send them your way.

This blog was created for our business and event recycling customers. Wastebusters doesn’t provide kerbside recycling collections. If you’re looking for information about your household bins, head to Queenstown Lakes District Council’s website for guidance.

From our General Manager - Na Tō Tātou Kaiwhakahaere

This year our amazing Wastebusters whānau has been busy keeping everything we can out of landfill and supporting resourcefulness in our community while also working on bringing our dream of Wastebusters 2.0 into reality.

We were humbled and absolutely stoked to take home the Wānaka Chamber of Commerce Business Awards Supreme Business Award, along with the Community Contribution and Business Sustainability awards. This success was a powerful recognition of the dedicated mahi of our entire team, giving us huge confidence for the ambitious journey ahead.

We welcomed Aviette Musin on a fixed-term contract as our new Programme Manager for Wastebusters 2.0. Her expertise provided the dedicated, focused capacity needed to accelerate progress on this strategic goal.

Funding was secured through Queenstown Lakes Community Composting Project for the Compost Collect pilot, a joint venture with our neighbours Wānaka Greenwaste that will turn commercial food scraps into valuable compost, launching in 2026. We also intensified our focus on Construction and Demolition (C&D) materials, trialling diversion methodology and securing initial partnerships to divert waste from landfill. With our current site so space-constrained, we are extremely limited in the C&D materials which can be accepted for reuse, but this work will lay the groundwork for future diversion on a bigger site.

We made a compelling case to the Council for the necessary land expansion for Wastebusters 2.0 and prepared for the MfE Waste Minimisation Fund application process to support our expansion plans. 

A continued focus for us this year has been on strengthening the Wastebusters whānau and ensuring we are equipped not just for the daily challenges, but for future growth. We continued to be a Living Wage employer, reflecting our commitment to the well-being and value of our staff. Feedback from the team via staff survey results highlighted strong morale and resilience within our workplace culture with 89% saying they enjoy working at Wastebusters and 93% feeling cared for by their manager. 

The district’s rapid growth brings challenges as well as opportunities, particularly the Ballantyne Road/Riverbank Road roadworks which demanded flexibility and good humour from our team and customers throughout 2024. Despite the road cones, ongoing community support ensured our Reuse Shop continued to be a first choice destination for both locals and visitors. Improved donation flows and adding new changing rooms has made the shop operation smoother and more efficient for everyone.

Wastebusters’ partnership with events continues to go from strength to strength: including the trial of a food scraps collection from vendors. And our Recycle team did the huge job of relabeling all our events recycling bins to align with national recycling colours, making it easier for event-goers to know what to do. Wastebusters recycling trucks continue to be a much-loved presence in town servicing our 408 business customers, with the team doing a great job of keeping our aging fleet serviceable, in line with our kaupapa of keeping resources in use for as long as possible. 

Our Reduce team has continued to deliver exceptional impact, with more than 11,000 people engaged in person through our education and engagement in the community. The Resourceful Communities programme inspires our community to take action and builds the knowledge and know how to engage in areas like repair, low waste living and textile waste diversion. It is proudly supported by QLDC’s zero waste district’s programme which recognises the impact of community connection for zero waste action. 

We were stoked to join Environment Hubs Aotearoa, and we look forward to collaborating with this network and amplifying our collective impact on environmental action and resourcefulness across Aotearoa.

We worked with an impact consultant to implement an evaluation framework and behaviour change model to better plan, deliver and measure our impact, and have begun rolling out our learnings across all our programmes.

It was a busy year in advocacy, starting with participation in QLDC’s Waste Management and Minimisation Plan process. We appreciated QLDC’s approach in bringing Wastebusters and other stakeholders in early in the process, which has resulted in a constructive plan for the next six years. Wastebusters has also made submissions on national and local level, including The Right to Repair Bill, the Container Return Scheme and the publicly notified resource consent for McDonald’s in Wānaka.

Ultimately, this year has been about delivering impact while building the foundations for a much larger and even more impactful operation, securing Wastebusters’ future for our community. The heart of our work remains resource recovery and community engagement, and we enter the next 25 years of zero waste leadership with great confidence, welcome community support and an unwavering focus. 

Gina Dempster

General Manager

November 2025

wastebusters yard team summer fair 2024

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