Recycling and resource recovery

Information on recycling in Kaipara

What you can recycle and where

Where to recycle in Kaipara

You have two options for recycling in our district - you can:

  • purchase an official Kaipara refuse yellow bag from one of your local retailers

  • take your clean recycling to one of our depots if you live in West Kaipara - or to the Hakaru Re:Sort station if you live over in the east.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: remember to WASH your recycling. Soiled/dirty recycling will have to be sent to landfill, and one dirty item in a bag can contaminate all of the rest!

Where to buy bags

Our rubbish and recycling bags are available at several of your local outlets including grocery stores, gas stations and news outlets.

Our recommended retail pricing for the bags is:

$4.30 for rubbish bags, $2.00 for recycling bags.

What can be recycled?

You can put the following into the yellow bags:

  • PLASTICS with recycling symbols 1, 2 & 5 ONLY

  • PAPER -Magazines, biscuit boxes, cereal boxes

  • CARDBOARD Beer Boxes, soda drink boxes, packaging boxes etc.

  • ALUMINIUM CANS

  • STEEL & TIN CANS

  • GLASS - brown, green, blue, clear

The attached guide made by our friends at Sustainable Kaipara can assist you with remembering what to include - you can also download a copy to keep on the fridge!

We sort your recycling

When the yellow recycling bags land at our Ruawai depot, we set about hand sorting all the recycling into the various materials. Our team know how to spot the different materials and sort them quickly!

On the topic of yellow bags - we acknowledge it is not a perfect system, however until the local council make a decision to move to a rates based recycling service, the user-pays system of the bags is here to stay.  In the meantime - we DO recycle the yellow bags with our friends at Future post or alternatively you can take a load directly to one of your local depots.

Recycling other materials

We are also able to take other harder to recycle materials at our Dargaville depot - including aerosol cans, aluminium foil, whiteware, televisions, e-waste, batteries and more. 

For a full list and pricing, please check out the Dargaville depot page.