A Christchurch City Council team began conducting visual checks of yellow wheelie bins in a bid to improve residents understanding of what can be put in their recycling bins.
The team has been putting gold stars on bins that have all the right items in them and leaving behind educational material at properties with bins that contain the wrong materials.
In the first weeks of the programme, the checks showed about one in three yellow wheelie bins contained general rubbish that is not recyclable.
Only about 14 per cent of the bins inspected were getting gold stars.
However, council resource recovery manager Ross Trotter said the situation is improving as awareness around what can be recycled grows.
“The team has been re-visiting the properties they checked in the first weeks of the programme and they have been noticing a big improvement in people’s recycling habits," he said.
"We are now seeing less contamination in the yellow wheelie bins and about 35 per cent of the bins that are checked are receiving gold stars.
“We would really like to thank those people who have acted on the information we have provided about what stuff can be recycled and changed their habits accordingly,’’ Mr Trotter said.
About 57 per cent of the bins checked still contained a small amount of items that cannot be recycled.
"The things that still seem to be tripping people up are soft plastics and lids on bottles," Mr Trotter said.
"Any plastic that you can easily scrunch or bend in your hand – like plastic bags, cling film, bubble wrap or biscuit trays – need to go in the red bin, not the yellow bin.
“Lids, even if they are made of plastic, need to be removed from bottles and containers and put in the red bin, otherwise they can contaminate the other recyclable material."
“If people continue to put rubbish in their recycling bins, despite our attempts to educate them about what material belongs in them, they will ultimately have their bins removed.
"The yellow bins are for specific household recyclable items and we will not tolerate them being used for general rubbish."
Mr Trotter said it is important people understand the contents of the recycling bins will continue to be checked on a regular basis, even once the current audit programme has ended.
"The companies that take our recyclable material have a low threshold for contamination.
"If a load has too much of the wrong stuff in it, they will simply reject it and it will be sent to landfill.
"We want to avoid that so we will check the content of bins on an ongoing basis to ensure people are recycling right."
Check the council's website or download the Christchurch Wheelie Bins App to find out what belongs in each collection bin.
