Red, yellow or green? The stress of putting the wrong thing in the wrong bin

The great Oscar Wilde once said, “It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.” Though it seems unlikely, I am increasingly convinced he was referring to navigating Australia’s complex waste management system—more specifically, my recent attempt to recycle a pizza box.

It was a Sunday evening, and everyone in the house agreed that I couldn’t be bothered cooking, so those three glorious words were uttered: “Let’s get takeaway!” A rigorous debate followed, and the case was made for Thai (great leftovers) and Mexican (delicious but doesn’t travel well) before settling on pizza (order two large and get a free garlic bread).

I am stuck in a vicious cycle of attempting to recycle, and no number of colour-coded bins can save me. Credit: Dionne Gain

After dinner, my son asked if we could go to the bin because that’s all he thinks about these days. At two years old, he cannot discern what is or isn’t fun, and for him, right now, going to the bin may as well be flying to Disneyland.

This is a real shame because the entire waste management system stresses me out. We live in a multi-storey apartment block with a shared set of bins, and while I have a rough understanding of the colour coding system (green = garden, yellow = recycling, red = everything else?) I live in constant fear of getting it wrong.

Which I apparently did when I chose to deposit the pizza box into the yellow recycling bin. “Oil stains!” said the panicked voice behind me. Appearing from the darkness was a man from a neighbouring building doing his own Sunday night bin run. According to him, oil contaminates the cardboard, which makes it impossible to recycle, so could I please put it in the red bin?

Picking through my rubbish, he explained that I was also incorrectly recycling my coffee cups and that lids from the milk bottle must be separated into general waste. A trash audit with a stranger is not my idea of a fun time, but the more mistakes he pointed out, the worse I felt.

Having been busted by the bin police, I resolved to turn things around. Returning home, I explained to my wife that starting immediately, we would become recycling people, so we would need to get a compost and perhaps some keep cups.

Unfortunately, figuring out the right way to do things proved easier said than done, and despite my best intentions, the worst mistakes prevailed.

For every single-use plastic I rinsed and recycled, I would accidentally dispose of a nappy, a mistake that would hang heavy on my conscience for 500 years.

To make matters worse, I spent so much time researching that I began seeing bin violations everywhere. Neighbours I once considered friends would haphazardly toss out batteries in general waste, and I would make a mental note that they were awful people who hated the environment.

Don’t they know Sydney will run out of landfill space without urgent intervention by 2030? Or that recycling rates in Australia have stagnated at about 65 per cent since 2020-21, a major contributor to the landfill crisis?

Two Bins at No. 4 (2018), oil on canvas. Frank Nowlan’s artwork captures Australia’s iconic colour-coded bins.

Obviously, these were fun facts I picked up in my studies, but just as I was getting a handle on what went where and why, our local council announced we would soon be delivered food organics garden organics (FOGO) bins. According to the leaflet (which I later recycled), the FOGO bins help the environment by reducing waste going to landfills, creating compost, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The FOGO bins have been rolled out elsewhere in the country with varying degrees of success, but the general feedback is that a) they stink and b) people continue to get it wrong. They see a bin with a lid that might be green, red, yellow, burgundy or purple and chuck stuff in it.

And therein lies the issue, the dirty little secret that makes waste management an increasingly insurmountable task. Most people want to do the right thing, but at a time when we all have macro problems microplastics are not often front of mind.

My FOGO FOMO is over but a new bin presents a whole new challenge.Credit: Jim Pavlidis

So, what’s the solution? Well, some Sydney councils are known to name and shame residents by leaving notes on their bins explaining how they can better recycle. Personally, I don’t think this goes far enough.

If we’ve learnt one thing in the social media age, public shaming is an incredibly potent tool. Why not harness the collective power of pedantic neighbours by employing them as bin monitors? I guarantee that there is one recycling enthusiast in every apartment building and on every street who would gladly spend their days live-streaming from the FOGO bins, judging anyone who dares flaunt the system. Recycling an oily pizza box? Go ahead; just know the world is watching.

Ultimately, environmental guilt may not be enough to change someone’s behaviour but threaten them with widespread embarrassment, and things will start to shift. It may not be the most admirable model, but sometimes, you only get the best results with the worst intentions.

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

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