What happens to items at Recycle It Saturday

In 2024, more than 3,400 residents attended Recycle It Saturday and saved 70 tonnes from landfill. That's 20kg per person – or a heavily packed suitcase.

The next Recycle It Saturday is on Saturday 24 May from 9am to 3pm at Alexandra Canal Depot and is open to City of Sydney, Waverley and Woollahra council residents only. We’ll ask for your address and check that it’s in these local council areas before we can accept your items.

Find out what you can drop off and remember to group items into different boxes or bags beforehand, so they’re easy for us to sort on the day. We recommend old cardboard boxes, which you can leave with us for recycling.

Have you ever wondered what happens to the items you drop off at the event? We look at 5 items and share their journey once you’ve said goodbye.

Empty blister packs

Not sure what to do with empty paracetamol or ibuprofen packets? These little plastic and foil items, called blister packs, are made of valuable materials but can’t be recycled in kerbside bins. They can be fully foil too and we’ll accept both kinds for recycling. They just need to be empty.

The blister packs we collect are transported by Australian company Pharmacycle to Silverwater for recycling. 

Blister packs are shredded, ground and split into their component parts using air-density and electrostatic separation.

The plastic is provided to a Victorian company to make decking products. The foil is sent to a NSW factory and turned into aluminium pucks used in steel-making.

Blister packs contain reusable plastic and infinitely recyclable aluminium foil. Sending your blister packs for recycling saves these precious resources from landfill and gives them a second life.  

Bicycles

Old bicycles are picked up by Revolve ReCYCLING, a not-for-profit organisation based in Alexandria.

Bikes that have reached the end of their life are resold or stripped of working parts to give other bicycles a new lease of life. Any remaining steel, aluminium and rubber are recycled to make new products.

Revolve repairs or refurbishes bicycles in good working condition to be resold at an affordable price. Kids' bicycles are repaired and distributed by the Benevolent Society to families in need.

X-rays

Old x-ray, MRI and CT scans or films can be fully recycled when you drop them off at Recycle It Saturday. As for any personal details, they get destroyed in the recycling process.

We send these films to a local processor where the silver is recycled using an electrolytic process. Firstly, the films are placed in a chemical bath that dissolves any silver in the imaging layer. An electric current is then passed through the solution, depositing the pure metallic silver on one of the electrodes.

Back in its original, precious metal state, this silver can be recycled into items such as jewellery, utensil plating and electrical components.

The remaining backing film is made from plastic, which gets recycled into a range of products, from shampoo bottles to polyester fleece.

By recycling, we can recover precious metals and reduce the need to mine for new resources.

Electronics

E-waste, or electronic waste, includes everything from old televisions and computers to microwaves and mobile phones.

These electronics are not really waste at all, but valuable resources. The electronics we collect are diverted from landfill and around 95% of raw materials recovered are recycled.

Electronics are sent to a local processor where they are sorted and broken down into various parts including glass, metals, plastics, batteries, cabling and circuit boards. These materials are used to make new products. Remember to delete your data before dropping your device off. The recycling process doesn’t include data wiping.

The plastic in many electronics and devices can be recycled into new plastic products, such as shipping pallets, outdoor furniture, play equipment and pens.

Batteries are an important item to recycle. They contain materials that are non-renewable – once we run out, they can’t be replenished. The good news is battery materials such as mercury, lithium and zinc can be recycled over and over again to make new batteries.

Some electronics may be repaired and refurbished before being resold by our local processor. These items undergo data wiping before they are resold.

Who knows, you may have parts of your old mobile in your new device.

Small metal items

At Recycle It Saturday we’ll take any small items that weigh less than 10kg and are made mostly of metal – think pots and pans that have cooked their last meal, old cutlery, mystery keys, nuts and bolts, metal jewellery, hammers, screwdrivers or those wire coat hangers from the dry cleaner.

Once you’ve dropped them off, we send your small metal items to a local recycling facility, where they’re sorted into categories like steel, copper, aluminium, lead, silver and gold.

After this, these different metals are shredded and sent to a smelter, where they’re mixed with other materials to create brand-new products – again reducing the need to mine for new resources and giving valuable metals a second life.

The next Recycle It Saturday is on Saturday 24 May from 9am to 3pm at Alexandra Canal Depot. Find out what you can bring.