Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland

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."