How recycling is actually sorted, and why Australia is quite bad at it
By Lottie Dalziel, Founder of Banish · Last updated: May 2026
When you put a yoghurt tub in the yellow bin and wheel it out on bin night, what actually happens to it? This is the question we get asked more than almost any other, and the answer is genuinely interesting. It's also where most people's good recycling intentions get derailed, because if you don't know what kerbside actually sorts, you can't help it do its job.
This guide walks through how recycling works in Australia in 2026: the journey from your bin to the Material Recovery Facility (MRF), the machines that separate it, where Australia's system works well, and where it's still falling short. And because soft plastics are the elephant in the room, we've covered the post-RedCycle gap and what to do about it.
The journey from your bin to a bale
Once your yellow bin is emptied, the truck drives to a Material Recovery Facility, usually within 30-50 kilometres. Most metropolitan Australians' recycling goes to a MRF run by Cleanaway, Veolia, SUEZ (now part of Veolia) or REMONDIS. The MRF is essentially a factory that turns mixed recyclables into baled commodities - sorted paper, sorted plastics by type, sorted glass by colour, sorted metals - which are then sold to processors who turn them into new products.
In 2026 Australia has around 200 MRFs operating, with a significant minority now fully automated since the federal government's 2021 export ban on unprocessed waste forced a serious investment wave. The China National Sword policy in 2018 was the first jolt, the export ban was the second, and the result is that more sorting now happens onshore than ever before. We still aren't where we need to be, but the trajectory is the right way.
What happens inside an MRF
The kerbside content from your yellow bin goes through a sequence of sorting steps, each one designed to separate a specific material. Roughly in order:
1. Pre-sort and bag-break
The mixed recycling tips onto a conveyor belt, where staff at the pre-sort station pull off the worst contamination - plastic bags (these jam the next stages), nappies, hoses, garden waste, e-waste, anything that obviously shouldn't be there. About 5-15% of your average kerbside load is contamination that ends up in landfill from this point.
2. Trommels (rotating drums for sieving)
A trommel is a large rotating drum with holes punched through it. Smaller items fall through the holes; bigger ones stay on top and travel onwards. Trommels separate items by size - broken glass and lids fall through, while bottles, cans and cardboard stay on the line.
3. Star screens and disc screens (paper vs containers)
The next step separates 2D items (paper, cardboard) from 3D items (bottles, cans, tubs). Star screens are spinning shafts with star-shaped discs; flat material rides over the top, while 3D containers fall through the gaps. The paper stream goes off to be baled. The container stream continues on.
4. Optical sorters (plastics by type)
This is where modern MRFs really earn their keep. Optical sorters use near-infrared (NIR) light to identify the resin type of every plastic item that passes underneath them. The scanner reads the spectroscopic fingerprint of the plastic in milliseconds, and a row of high-pressure air jets blasts the targeted item into the right bin. PET, HDPE and PP each have their own sorter or their own pass on a multi-stream sorter. Older MRFs without optical sorters rely on manual picking, which is slower and less accurate.
5. Eddy currents (aluminium)
An eddy current separator uses a powerful rotating magnetic field to repel non-ferrous metals, especially aluminium. As the stream passes the eddy current head, aluminium cans literally jump off the belt into their own collection bin while non-metallic items keep going. It's one of the most reliable steps in the whole MRF.
6. Overband magnets (steel)
Steel cans and tins are pulled out of the stream by a strong electromagnet suspended above the conveyor. This catches steel food cans, lids and anything ferrous. Magnets are cheap, reliable and very effective, which is why steel cans have one of the highest recovery rates in Australia.
7. Manual quality control
Even with full automation, there's almost always a final picking line with staff catching contaminants and pulling out anything that's been mis-sorted. This is the line that decides whether a bale of paper meets the spec the buyer pays for.
8. Baling
Each separated material - PET, HDPE, mixed paper, cardboard, aluminium, steel, glass by colour - is compressed into a bale and stored for collection. Bales are sold by tonne to processors. PET bales go to plants like the Cleanaway/Pact/Asahi facility in Albury that produces food-grade rPET pellets. Aluminium bales go to smelters. Paper bales go to mills like Visy.
Where Australia's MRFs do well
Aluminium, steel and HDPE/PET bottles are sorted reliably in every modern MRF. Container Deposit Scheme bottles in particular are some of the cleanest, highest-value recyclables in the country, because they've been kept separate from food residue and other contamination. CDS bottles often go bottle-to-bottle through a closed-loop process.
Paper and cardboard, despite ongoing market wobbles, are well recovered too. Australia's paper recycling rate (around 60-65% of paper put on the market) is competitive globally, and Visy's onshore paper mills mean a lot of it stays in Australia rather than being exported.
Where the system is still quite bad at it
Two main problems remain.
Soft plastics. MRFs are not built to sort soft plastics. They get caught in trommels, wrap around the star screens, and jam optical sorters. Pre-2022, soft plastics were diverted out of the yellow bin via the RedCycle in-store collection scheme at Coles and Woolworths. RedCycle paused in November 2022 and never came back, leaving thousands of tonnes stockpiled in warehouses. In 2026 the soft plastics gap is still only partially plugged by Curby (NSW select councils), the Soft Plastics Taskforce in-store trials at Coles, Woolworths and ALDI (limited stores), Recycle Smart's paid home pickups, and Banish's BRAD program for specific items. It's a patchwork, and for many Australians the honest answer in 2026 is still that soft plastics belong in the red bin until your area gets a real option.
Small items. Anything smaller than a credit card - bottle caps, bread tags, blister packs - slips through MRF screens and ends up either in the glass fines (the smashed stuff that goes through the trommel) or in landfill. The MRF can't sort what it can't catch. This is why BRAD, MobileMuster, B-cycle and other specialist programs matter: they exist specifically because kerbside can't handle small or multi-material items.
The contamination problem in numbers
The Australian Council of Recycling estimates that around 10-15% of every yellow bin in Australia is contamination - items that either belong in another bin or shouldn't be in the system at all. In some council areas it's worse. Common offenders:
- Plastic bags (every single time, they jam the MRF; never bag your recycling)
- Soft plastics in the yellow bin since RedCycle's collapse
- Dirty paper soaked with food or grease
- Nappies (yes, regularly)
- Lithium-ion batteries (these literally cause MRF fires - never the yellow bin)
- Garden hose and Christmas lights (tangles around everything)
- Compostable plastics (designed for industrial composting, contaminate plastic recycling)
When contamination crosses about 15% of a load, the whole truckload may be downgraded and sometimes sent to landfill. Your recycling has to be clean enough to be commercially worth processing, or it doesn't get processed.
Why Australia's lagged behind
Three reasons.
First, we sent too much offshore for too long. From the 1990s through to 2017-2018, it was cheaper to bale up mixed recyclables and ship them to China than to invest in domestic sorting infrastructure. When China's National Sword policy banned most imports in 2018, Australia was caught with too few MRFs operating at too low a technology grade. The 2021 federal Recycling and Waste Reduction Act has phased out exports of unprocessed paper, plastic, glass and tyres - but the catch-up is still ongoing.
Second, our population is spread thin. MRFs are capital-intensive plants that need volume to be economic. A MRF in Brisbane or Sydney can run at scale. A MRF in regional NT or rural WA cannot, so regional Australians often have lower-grade recycling services and longer transport runs to a city MRF.
Third, the market for recycled material in Australia has historically been weak. Onshore demand for recycled PET, HDPE and glass cullet has only recently grown, on the back of mandates like NSW's recycled-content procurement rules. Without a healthy domestic market, MRFs have less incentive to produce high-quality bales.
Where BRAD fits in
Kerbside MRFs are designed for a relatively narrow set of clean, high-volume materials - bottles, jars, cans, paper, cardboard. BRAD is built for the items kerbside isn't designed for and doesn't sort: blister packs, chip packets, bread bags, toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, cosmetics packaging, pens, coffee pods, razors, stand-up pouches. Mail one Mega Box in, and we send those items to the specialist processors that can actually recycle them. BRAD is not a replacement for the yellow bin - it's the safety net for everything the yellow bin can't catch.
If you've ever stood at the bin holding a chip packet and thought "where does this actually go", BRAD is the answer for the items kerbside doesn't sort.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does recycling work in Australia?
Kerbside yellow-bin recycling goes from your bin to a Material Recovery Facility (MRF), where conveyor belts, trommels, optical sorters, magnets and eddy currents separate it into bales of single materials - PET, HDPE, paper, cardboard, aluminium, steel, glass. Each bale is sold to a processor who turns it into new products. Around 200 MRFs operate across Australia in 2026.
What is an MRF?
A Material Recovery Facility is the factory that sorts mixed kerbside recycling into single-material bales. MRFs use a combination of mechanical sorting (trommels, screens, magnets) and optical sorting (near-infrared scanners) to separate plastics by type, paper from containers, and metals from non-metals.
How is plastic sorted by type?
Optical sorters use near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to identify the resin type of each plastic item as it passes underneath. A row of high-pressure air jets then blasts the targeted plastic into the right collection bin in milliseconds. PET, HDPE and PP are the three plastics most consistently sorted this way in Australia.
What happens to aluminium cans at the MRF?
Aluminium is removed by an eddy current separator, which uses a powerful rotating magnetic field to repel non-ferrous metals off the conveyor belt into their own bin. It's one of the highest-recovery steps in the whole MRF. Aluminium can be infinitely recycled with only 5-10% of the energy needed to produce virgin aluminium.
Why is Australia's recycling rate so low?
Several reasons: too much was sent offshore for too long, our population is spread thin so MRFs in regional areas struggle for volume, onshore markets for recycled material have been weak, and contamination rates in yellow bins remain high (10-15% on average). The 2021 federal export ban and state-level recycled content mandates are starting to shift this.
What happens to recycling that gets contaminated?
Light contamination is removed by pre-sort and quality control staff. Heavy contamination (above around 15% of a load) means the load can be downgraded or sent to landfill. Whole truckloads have been rejected at MRF gates because of just a few problem items. Always rinse, never bag, and keep batteries out.
Where do soft plastics go in 2026?
MRFs aren't designed to sort soft plastics, and RedCycle's 2022 collapse left a national gap. In 2026 the alternatives are Curby (NSW select councils), Soft Plastics Taskforce trial stores at Coles, Woolworths and ALDI (limited), Recycle Smart paid home pickup in metro areas, and BRAD for specific items like bread bags and chip packets. For many areas, the red bin is still the honest answer.
What's the difference between MRF and FOGO?
A MRF processes dry recyclables from the yellow bin - paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, glass. FOGO (Food Organics Garden Organics) is a separate organic-waste stream that goes to a composting or anaerobic digestion facility. The two systems run in parallel and are designed for completely different materials.