Link: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/592297/what-auckland-is-doing-wrong-when-it-comes-to-recycling-and-how-it-can-change

Too much of Auckland's recycling is just going to waste - the landfill, that is, and officials say that needs to change.

Auckland is one of New Zealand's least efficient cities for recycling collection, and an awful lot of that is because the wrong rubbish is being put in the bins.

About 30 percent of what goes into Auckland's kerbside recycling bins is actually being sent to landfills due to contamination or not actually being accepted recyclables.

"Recycling still works, but contamination has been increasing."

Here's some top tips that waste experts offered:

• Don't put your recycling into plastic bags when you put them in the bin. They'll just get chucked out entirely into the landfill.
• Soft plastics - packaging, wrapping, bags, et cetera - aren't allowed - as they get tangled in the machinery. You can instead drop off soft plastic packaging to recycle at multiple
• Plastic lids from bottles are a problem - anything under a certain size can cause problems in sorting machinery. Discard lids or see about recycling them with the caps and lids recycling scheme and put the clean containers in recycling instead.
• Avoid anything that's dangerous - gas bottles, batteries, rechargeable items. Empty aerosol cans should be put in your rubbish bin instead.
• Recycling that's overly contaminated with other waste - for instance a pizza box with a bit of grease on it is fine, but a pizza box that's got huge chunks of yesterday's pepperoni special on it is not.

People sometimes think it's become too complicated to sort recycling, but Jaine said it's actually pretty easy.

"A simple rule of thumb is to place only household packaging and containers from your kitchen, bathroom and laundry in your recycling bin: Glass bottles and jars; paper and cardboard; plastic bottles, trays, and containers (numbers 1, 2 and 5 only); tin, steel and aluminium cans."

Aucklanders.

Gotta avoid blaming your readers and imply the local government in the headline.

Haha most if not all of this applies to anyone in the country because they standardised recycling rules a few years back (which is mentioned in the article).

This bit was mentioned in the article:

Irvine has said that the first step to improve Auckland's efforts of what goes into the bins should be a large-scale public education programme on recycling, funded by central government.

"This was promised, but never delivered. It now needs to be made a priority."

I wonder which government promised and why it wasn't delivered (I can probably guess the answer though).

I don't really think blaming the readers helps. In any widespread problem there is a council/government intervention that can help if we're willing to pay for it.