Kerbside recycling: glass bottles and jars
What can go into your council kerbside recycling is now the same across Aotearoa. Find out about glass bottles and jars.
On this page
- Clear, brown, green and blue glass bottles and jars.
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Remove the lid.
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Rinse dirty food jars to get rid of the remaining food.
- Use a spoon or spatula to scrape out the remaining food.
- Wash your glass bottles and jars when you are doing the dishes, or put them in the dishwasher if there’s room.
- Glass bottles and jars used for medicines
- Glass cookware
- Drinking glasses, mugs, plates and jugs
- Lightbulbs
- Window glass
- Broken glass
- Lids from glass bottles and jars.
- Glass cookware is treated in the manufacturing process to withstand high temperatures. This means it won’t melt alongside bottles and jars. Put broken or chipped cookware in your rubbish bin.
- Glass bottles and jars used for medicines may also be treated to withstand high temperatures. Some contain substances that are hazardous for staff handling.
- Drinking glasses, mugs, plates and jugs are made from a different mix of materials to glass bottles and jars. This means they can't be recycled in your kerbside collection.
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Lightbulbs are made from more than one material.
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Window glass is too large and easily broken to be safely collected and recycled through your kerbside collection. It may also contain other materials (eg, laminated or safety glass).
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Broken glass is hazardous to sorters.
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Lids are too small for recycling machinery to remove and sort.
Just because these items can’t be recycled at kerbside doesn’t mean you can’t recycle them.
Lightbulbs
Mitre10 collects old lightbulbs in its stores.
Lightbulb recycling [Mitre 10 website]
Crockery
Donate unwanted glasses, mugs and plates to your local charity store.
Other items
Ask your council where you can recycle other glass items that can’t go in your kerbside recycling.
Most of the glass collected is turned into new glass bottles in Auckland.
In some parts of the country glass is crushed and reused:
- as a sand substitute for roading and construction
- in concrete paving stones and pavements
- to make sand for water blasting
- as a filter in swimming pools.
- Glass is separated by colour. This is either done at the kerbside or after crushing at the recycling plant.
- Glass is crushed, sorted and cleaned to remove contaminants. The crushed glass is known as ‘cullet’.
- Cullet is sent to a processing facility where it is mixed with other raw materials. The more recycled glass that is used, the fewer the raw materials that are needed and the less energy used.
- Cullet is then melted in a furnace.
- Moulds are used to create new bottles.
- Collected glass is recycled and processed in Aotearoa.
- Most goes to the Visy processing plant and furnace in Auckland to be turned into glass bottles.
According to the Glass Packaging Forum, in Aotearoa:
- around 276,000 tonnes of glass bottles and jars are consumed annually.
- 188,000 tonnes are collected for recycling from households and businesses.
- in 2021, around 117,000 tonnes of glass were turned back into bottles. The remaining glass was used for roading or other uses.