10 items you didn’t know you could recycle

RecyclingZero Waste

18 Feb

Written By Elric Aublant

⚠️ Important:

You cannot put the items listed below in your recycling bin. They need to be brought to the locations listed.
Recycling prevents items from going to landfills. Recycling is not “great” for the environment but is better than landfill. We encourage you to reduce the waste you produce by avoiding packaging and single-use items.
If you know other recycling drop-off locations, please let us know! 💚

Tetra Paks

**Tetra Paks can be dropped off for free** and will be recycled in building materials (plaster boards) by saveBOARD NZ. ♻️

Escape Coffee (New Plymouth) uses some of saveBOARD’s products inside their beautiful building.
**📍 Drop-off location:**
The Junction Zero Waste, Colson Rd, New Plymouth
VIBE coffee cart, bottom of Borrell Ave hill, New Plymouth
Escape Coffee, 15 Liardet St, New Plymouth
Egmont Refuse office, Scott Street, Hāwera

2. Contact lens

Did you know that the end-to-end trail of waste generated annually in NZ from contact lens packaging could reach the top of **3,206 Sky Towers**? 🤯🤯🤯

In Ngāmotu New Plymouth you can recycle your contact lenses and foil packs!
**📍 Drop-off location:**
Judd Opticians, 17 King Street, New Plymouth
Browning & Matthews Optometrists, 100 Devon St East, New Plymouth

3. Soft Plastics

Countdown - Woolworths supermarkets offer soft plastics recycling. This scheme processes the plastic collected and turns it into fence posts and building products through Future Post and saveBOARD. 🚧

**📍 Drop-off locations:** Woolworths (Countdown) supermarkets around Taranaki: Hāwera, Stratford, Ngāmotu New Plymouth.
⚠️ ***Please make sure all packaging is clean, dry and empty****. For more information about what is accepted, click* *here*.

4. Ink, Toner and Printer Cartridge

Warehouse Stationery has a recycling programme available for free for all customers (from household to large businesses).

They can take and recycle any brand of ink cartridges, toner cartridges, drum cartridges and labelling cassettes. 🖨️
**📍 Drop-off locations:** Warehouse Stationery stores: Hāwera, Bell Block and Ngāmotu New Plymouth Central.

5. Bottle Lids

You can recycle your **#2 plastic milk bottle tops** and the metal lids.

For the **metal lids**: please separate aluminium (wine tops) from steel (beer caps and jar lids) and remove plastic lining.
**📍 Drop-off location:**
The Junction Zero Waste, Colson Rd, New Plymouth (inside the shop at the Recycling Wall)
Hāwera Transfer Station (only milk bottle lids)
The **Taranaki Milk Top Challenge** for schools will take place in Term 2 all around Taranaki.

Stratford schools collect 135,000 lids in bid to clean up recycling - RNZ (12 Feb. 2025)

6. Vapes

**Single-use vapes can be recycled** in New Plymouth and Hāwera.

**📍 Drop-off location:**
SHOSHA Vape Store, 53 Devon St West, New Plymouth
SHOSHA Vape Store, 92 Hight St, Hāwera
**VapeCycle** is also offering vape recycling. Find out more here.

7 . Colgate products (toothpaste tubes, brushes)

**What can be recycled?**

Empty Colgate product packaging including toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, plastic toothbrush packaging, floss packaging, interdental brushes, stand up toothpaste bottles and any kind of non-electric toothbrush and all affiliated non-recyclable packaging.
**📍 Drop-off location:** The Junction Zero Waste, Colson Rd, New Plymouth (inside the shop at the Recycling Wall)
**NOTE:** Electric toothbrushes, battery toothbrushes, and/or their parts are not accepted for recycling through the programme.

8. Coffee capsules

📍 Moccona, L'affare, Jeds, Illy (aluminium only) and L'OR coffee capsules can be recycled **at the Junction on Colson Road** (inside the shop at the Recycling Wall).

📍 Nespresso capsules can be dropped off **at Hāwera LibraryPlus** - Te Ramanui o Ruaputahanga on High Street. (There is a cardboard box inside the main door.)
📍 Coffee capsules can be brought to **Matthews Real Estate Stratford and Stratford Post Shop**

You can also send capsules directly to TerraCycle using a shipping label downloaded from their website with a free account. Check that they accept your brand of capsules.

9. Razors

**All brands of blades and razors** (refillable and disposable products and replaceable-blade cartridge units); rigid plastic razor packaging and flexible plastic bag razor packaging can be recycled if brought to **the Recycling Wall at the Junction** (inside the shop at the Recycling Wall).

**📍 Drop-off location:** The Junction Zero Waste, Colson Rd, New Plymouth

10. Wetsuits

Most of the neoprene is made of artificial polymers, a non-biodegradable and non-compostable material **taking hundreds of years to decompose**…

**If your** **wetsuit is** **still usable** you can donate it to:
REPLAY with Sport Taranaki
Second Suits NZ (Auckland)
Wavewise NZ (surf therapy)

If your wetsuit is not usable anymore you can send it to:

Seventhwave NZ (Christchurch) will take your old wetsuit and give you a voucher for it (depending on the condition)
Coastlines (Auckland) will repurpose the neoprene

Read here our article “How to be a more Sustainable Surfer in 2025.