Ipswich City Council

Household Refuse Collection and Recycling

Ipswich City Council provides households with a 240-litre green mobile wheelie bin for refuse disposal and a 240-litre wheelie bin with a yellow lid for recyclable waste.

The refuse collection service is provided weekly.
Household recyclables are collected fortnightly.

The charges for a weekly refuse collection service and a fortnightly recyclables collection service is $74.25 per quarter ($297.00 per annum) for the 2012/2013 financial year. These charges appear on your quarterly rates notices.

Both bins remain the property of Ipswich City Council and should not be used for any other purpose than the disposal of waste. To check which day and week your bins are serviced, view the

Recycling Calendar 2012 - 2013 (PDF, 1.1 mb)
Recycling Calendar 2013 - 2014 (PDF, 959 kb)
What Can I Recycle In My Recycling Bin Fact Sheet (PDF, 1.4 mb)
Residential Waste Services – Your Guide (PDF, 3.3 mb)

If you would like a copy of the calendar please contact Council on (07) 3810 6666.

Wheelie Bin Placement and Collection

Household refuse bins are emptied on the same day each week, regardless of whether the collection day is a public holiday (this includes Christmas Day and Good Friday).
The recycling bin is emptied every second garbage collection day.
Collection times vary from week to week. Therefore it is always good practice to place bins out by 6.00 a.m. on the collection day.
Make sure the bin lids close properly. No rubbish or recyclables should protrude from the bin. Government legislation generally requires lids to be closed at all times. In addition, overfull bins can result in spilt waste when the bin is being emptied.
Ipswich Waste Services uses specially designed trucks to empty the bins so their positioning on the kerbside or roadside is very important.
The bins should be placed not more than one metre from the kerb edge (or if there is no kerb, the road edge) so that the truck can reach the bins.
The bins should be in clear view of the road with the handles facing away from the road. The driver can easily miss a bin if it is hidden behind a tree for example.
Leave a space between 30cm and one metre between bins so that the collection trucks do not hit bins together and knock them over.
Bins are to be no heavier than 50kg.

What can you place in your yellow-lidded recycling bin?

Paper, newspaper, magazines, junk mail
Cardboard boxes and cardboard packaging
Milk and juice cartons
Pizza boxes (no food)
Glass bottles and jars
Aluminium (drink) cans
Steel (food) cans
Aerosol cans
Rigid plastic bottles and containers (no styrofoam)

Please place items loosely in your recycling bin. NO PLASTIC BAGS!

Please ensure that you only place these materials in your recycling bin. If it is not on this list then it cannot be recycled in Ipswich.

Where does my recycling go?

The contents of your recycling bin are transported by the recycling truck to a Material Recovery Facility (MRF). At the MRF, recyclables are sorted by a series of processes, machines and hand separation into categories of materials i.e. steel, glass etc. The materials are then sent to a number of recycling manufacturers to be made into new items. It is important that the materials are free from contamination. If contamination occurs at any stage, the whole load of recyclables may have to be sent to landfill.

Recycling tips

All recyclable materials, including paper and cardboard, should be placed loosely in the recycling bin, NOT in plastic bags.
Please rinse all food containers. Many of your recyclables are sorted by hand and it is extremely unhygenic and unpleasant for the sorting staff to handle dirty containers. Tip: use old water at the end of washing up to clean the recyclable containers and help conserve water as well!
Please ensure all bottles jars and containers are empty before recycling them.
Remove lids from bottles, jars and containers. Place them in the recycling bin separately.
Labels do not need to be removed.
Only recycle clean paper and cardboard.
Remove straws and other objects from drink containers before recycling.

Related Information

Last Updated 14 Jun 2013 |

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