Soft Plastics

Soft plastics are flexible plastics that can be easily scrunched into a ball, such as plastic bags, chip packets, bread bags, mail satchels and cling wrap.

Despite its prolific use, only about 6% of soft plastic waste is recycled in Australia. The rest ends up in landfill or is littered into the environment, releasing toxins in our waterways and harming wildlife such as birds, turtles and whales.

Soft plastics can't be mixed with other recyclable items in your yellow-lid bin, due to the problems they cause at the facility where household recycling is taken. They get tangled in the sorting machinery, shutting down operations while they have to be manually removed. The sorting machinery can also mistake soft plastics for paper, with the plastic then contaminating the paper stream.

Fortunately, there are two free options for Newcastle households to recycle clean, soft plastics.

Curby Soft Plastics Program

The Curby Soft Plastics Program is available to Newcastle households to recycle soft plastic packaging from home.

While loose soft plastics are not accepted via our kerbside recycling service, the Curby Program works by tightly containing the soft plastics in specially branded or tagged bags that can easily be filtered from other recyclables at the sorting facility.

A smart phone is required to participate in the program.

To join, please visit the Curby website.

Please note:

• The Curby program is not an initiative of City of Newcastle; all enquiries/troubleshooting should be directed to Curby.
• All soft plastics must be contained in bags labelled with Curby tags (or placed in Curby branded bags). They must never be placed loose in your yellow-lid bin. This prevents contamination of the other recyclables collected via our kerbside bin service.
• Please remove any metal clips, such as those on netted fruit and vegetable bags or on bags of party ice or meat, before recycling soft plastics. The processing machinery is not designed to handle metal clips and they pose a significant problem to the recycling process.

Trouble shooting for existing Curby members:

Curby has recently migrated to a new web-based platform, Curby Rewards. The previous mobile-based app is no longer supported and will show an error message if you try to log in. To scan the QR code on your Curby bags/tags, please access Curby Rewards using your web browser. The Curby team hope to make the mobile app available again soon.

For all other issues or enquiries, please visit Curby Rewards, click "Get Help" and then "Report an issue".

Sort & Save

Soft plastics can be dropped off for recycling at Summerhill Waste Management Centre. There is no charge for Newcastle households as part of our Sort & Save service. Terms and conditions apply.

Our Sort & Save (PDF 885kB) flyer provides an overview of the service, including other recyclable materials you can drop off during your visit.