Commercial dry mixed recycling

Always allowed: Printer paper, magazines, newspaper, envelopes and cardboard boxes.
Sometimes allowed: Shredded paper.
Never allowed: Coffee cups, tissues, hand towels, greasy pizza boxes and laminated paper.

Always allowed: Clean plastic bottles and rinsed food containers.
Sometimes allowed: Caps, lids and plastic bags.
Never allowed: Polystyrene, bubble wrap, cling film, food packets and wrappers.

Always allowed: Glass bottles and jars.
Sometimes allowed: Drinking glasses.
Never allowed: Broken glass, window glass, Pyrex and lightbulbs.

Always allowed: Drinks cans, food tins and rinsed foil trays.
Sometimes allowed: Aluminium foil and aerosol cans.
Never allowed: Batteries, paint cans, cutlery and large metal objects.

Always allowed: N/A
Sometimes allowed: Clean juice, soup and milk cartons.
Never allowed: Contaminated cartons and multi-layered cartons.

Dry mixed recycling is less efficient than multi-stream recycling, requiring an additional, labour-intensive sorting stage to achieve the same output. This places extra strain on local material handling facilities.

Local waste providers accept slightly different assortments of dry mixed recyclables in their bins. This lack of standardisation often leads to inappropriate items being disposed of, further reducing the efficiency of recycling facilities.

With dry mixed recycling services, you pay for your waste to be sorted. For this reason, separate commercial cardboard recycling and commercial glass recycling services are typically cheaper per tonne of waste.