Doorstep Recycling
John and Anthena - Doorstep Recycling Service
City of Sydney: Making Tricky Recycling Easier from the Doorstep
Batteries, blister packs, small electronics, textiles and paint tins can all be recycled – but working out how and where to do it isn’t always easy. In FY26, RRA began working with the City of Sydney to deliver its Doorstep Recycling Service, making it easier for residents to recycle tricky household items that can’t go into kerbside recycling bins.
By providing a dedicated collection pathway for these items, the service increases resource recovery and helps prevent valuable materials from going to landfill, contaminating household recycling or being dumped illegally.
For residents, the experience is deliberately simple:
- Book a collection
- Leave the accepted items out
- RRA takes care of what happens next
Residents were quick to take up the service. In its first three months, RRA completed 978 scheduled collections, with growing demand leading the team to add an additional collection day.
Making the service easy and accessible for residents required plenty of work behind the scenes, including developing the digital booking system that supports it.
Community Resources ICT Manager Matt Blanch says success meant getting both sides right: the functionality of the system behind the service and the experience of the people using it.
“The rollout reinforced the importance of collaboration across system design, functionality and implementation, and of aligning the technical work with the needs of the business,” he says. “It was also important to work with external partners who could assist with getting the user experience right.”
“Our priority was making the system as simple as possible while meeting the different needs of residents and building managers.”
Residents and building managers can make one-off or recurring bookings from any device without creating an account. At the same time, the system needed to support an efficient collection service across the City of Sydney.
“Partway through implementation, we changed the design to group City of Sydney suburbs into zones serviced on set days,” Matt says. “This provides much better fuel and time efficiency for RRA and a better environmental outcome.”
The service also reaches beyond residential doorsteps. RRA collects problem waste from recycling stations at City of Sydney libraries and community centres, giving residents more ways to keep tricky materials out of general waste.
Once collected, each item follows its own recycling or reuse pathway. Electronics are separated into components such as metals, plastics and circuit boards. Aluminium coffee pods are processed so the aluminium can be recycled and the coffee grounds composted. Blister packs are separated into plastic and foil, while reusable small furniture can be rehomed with families in need.
By taking tricky recycling beyond traditional drop-off points and bringing it to doorsteps, apartment buildings, libraries and community centres, the service gives more people across the City of Sydney the opportunity to participate. More participation means more valuable materials recovered and returned to use, delivering better environmental outcomes across the city.
By providing a dedicated collection pathway for these items, the service increases resource recovery and helps prevent valuable materials from going to landfill, contaminating household recycling or being dumped illegally.
City of Sydney Doorstep Recycling Service
