Waste Disposal and Recycling in Zurich 2014: Comprehensive Overview

A quick reply on some aspects :

- (shopping) paper bags can be brought to the place where oyu recycle glass and tin cans, you will find there containers where you can put your bags (spoiled bags also). I'll try and shoot a picture one of these days to show you how it looks like.

- egg boxes are not considered as paper or cardboard. They can be disposed off in Zürisäckli or in Bioabfall

- all paper can be recycled together (with the exception of paper bags). This means newspaper, letters, magazines, gift wrapping paper, shoe wrapping paper, etc.

- batteries can be considered as hazardous waste and electronic waste. Therefore you can bring them to any place that collects either hazardous or electronic waste. Worth to note is that they can also be brought to Coop, and some workplaces have these green containers "MR Akku" or whatever it's called it's like a green Superman where you can bring your batteries

- PET collection is normally only for clean bottles. Not for things like shower gel, oil, washing powder, etc (anything sticky)

- My Coop (Coop Milchbuck) is rather small but it collects: PET, milk bottles (the white plastic ones), spoiled PET bottles (see above), batteries and light bulbs (halogen, LED or good old tungsten bulbs). I guess other Coops do that as well.

I got so excited about this i had to take a picture!

[](https://www.englishforum.ch/attachments/daily-life/92081d1417518252-waste-disposal-recycling-zurich-2014-comprehensive-overview-img_0119.jpg)

And here is the picture of the paper bags recycling stations...

Hi last night I 0 a paper bag with paper towels milk cartons etc in a paper bag for recycling next to a bin outside fir collection this morning. Around 10 someone rang my bell and spoke in very fast german and I just said ok and buzzed them in, thinking it was a serviceman. Do you think there's a link?

My neighbour had told me just to leave my recycling by the bin ? Did I m 8 sin derstand her? Will I get fined? There's nothing there linking me to the recycling so how would they know it's me?

We only moved here a couple of weeks ago. So its all different.

If you do get fined how do I find out?

Great post

Very helpful summary! Thanks for pulling the info together.

Did they pick up your bag or not?

I know that normally in Zurich you are not supposed to put your papers in a bag but to stack them and attach them with a thread. Though some people who pick up the waste tolerate it, and pick it up anyway, some dont. And sometimes inspectors pass after collection and go through what's left to see if they can find a name to fine the owner of the waste. But it's pretty rare for paper, I think.

Thanks for this social friendly thread, it was really helpful to me too.

For garbage disposal related stuffs, you can check www.GarbageDisposerReviews.com as well.

Very helpful thread. I now understand how to classify most of my waste, only question is how might I recycle old pots and pans? Is it sperrgut?

I have just found this awesome service http://www.mr-green.ch/ that I hope you will like it.

It is a new model of collecting recycled garbage instead of you going/driving the recycling to the containers. It is only in German unfortunately, but I think it is a very useful service that saves you sometimes a lot of time for a certain fee.

E.g. they give you free bags and you pay for the monthly pick up (depending on the frequency), send you a reminder sms the day before the pick up. You can recycle everything what you are able also to recycle in the city containers.

Cheers

I am relatively new to Zurich and facing bit difficulties to understand the waste management in Zurich.I was told by my landlord and friends that we should be using the grey disposal bin only for house hold bio-wastes in ZURI SACK and all other wastes should be disposed at special points.(I could see my neighbors (who using same container) disposing every single thing without any distinction in the same container in ZURI SACK. )

1) My grey disposal bin is missing from last week , How can I order a new one or whom should I contact for this?

2) Where can I dispose Plastic bags,Plastic Bottles & electronic wastes)

Just by creating this thread, you have caused other similar threads to be listed at the bottom of this page - just scroll down.

This is the most recent and probably the most helpful.

Waste Disposal and Recycling in Zurich 2014: Comprehensive Overview

Someone took time and trouble to create this, just for yours and others' benefit.

By entering a few key words into the search box, would probably have found it for you.

Hello Deepra,

electronics, you could take to any electronics store like media markt or interdiscount etc and they have an area to receive electronics as waste for free. Carton and paper should be marked on your calendar for pick up from your front door metal, glass and oils, there are containers for this at short distance on every neighborhood plastic bottles can be brought to any store like coop or migros and have containers for it, most of them accept batteries as well bags like coop paperbags often have a container near the glass, metal etc If you live in a place like my neighborhood, a bus comes every (add weekday) to pick up the recycling, as in the containers are inside the bus and we hop in to sort and leave our things there If all the above fails and you live in Zurich, there is the big recycling center, at the beginning of the year you should have received a magazine with coupons that save you the 30chf fee to bring up to 100kg of waste to the recycling center. Hope this helps

Kali

Some people don't care about the cost of a Züri-sack or the environment - they will just put it all in the same bin, but if you follow the guidelines as mentioned in thread (referred to above by Timow) you will find appropriate locations to distribute all your waste. Note - many of the plastic boxes used for strawberries etc are not recyclable (at least not here in the outskirts of Canton Zürich).

But, of course, when it gets merged with one of those threads, the dynamics ..... and links change - so now go to the OP of this thread.

A note about city materials: you can call the city and request that they send you all annual recycling/garbage materials in English. This way you'll have the entire pamphlet on hand in English. I highly recommend doing this.

Also, if you speak French or Italian better than German, you can have the city send other types of correspondence to you in one of those languages if English isn't available. I highly recommend making a few calls to put in these requests as they'll save you time down the road.

The calendar is available here: https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/...skalender.html

And there's a smartphone app: https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/...erich/app.html

I have been in Switzerland for 2 months but the waste disposal remains a mystery to me. This post has been helpful (danke!) but just wondering... so if I had a cup of yogurt, how to dispose the plastic cup, the paper wrapper around the cup, and the plastic (or whatever material) cover over it? What about potato chips packaging, chocolate wrappers, ice-cream container, etc. etc. I am all in for recycling.. although the system in Switzerland probably needs a formal class for it (and in English please) where I come from, every type of waste goes to the same bin.

The following applies to Zurich.

Yoghurt:

-Plastic container: If it says PET on the bottom (which it probably doesn't), then recycle it with your normal plastics at the grocery store. If it isn't PET, your grocery store might have some fancier plastic recycling options, but if it doesn't have a place for other plastics then you need to throw it away in your Zuri sack.

-Paper around cup: put it in with your cardboard recycling. If you tie your cardboard with twine, just put your smaller pieces of cardboard between other uniformly bigger pieces so that the whole stack has integrity when you tie it and put it on the street at that time of month.

-Plastic cover: This isn't PET. As with the container, if your grocery store is fancy you might find a recycling option there, but otherwise put it in the Zurisack. Good luck reading the German labels on the bins!

Potatochip packaging: Zurisack. Bigger grocery stores, like Migros at Lindenplatz, have a packaging disposal option. I'm not sure what they do with it or if it gets recycled, but I think you're supposed to use it before leaving the store for large plastic wrap and such, not to bring in bags of packaging from home after you've eaten your chips. If I'm wrong I hope someone will correct me.

Chocolate wrappers: those foil/plastic ones go in the trash. The fancy ones that come in thick paper and foil can have the paper recycled with your cardboard (all paper thicker than printer paper is considered cardboard). The foil part I throw away in the Zurisack because it isn't thick like tin cans, which go in the metal recycling, but maybe someone else knows a better way to dispose of it.

Ice-cream container: If you're talking about the black lidded, white plastic ones, these aren't PET, so unless you have a fancy grocery store plastic system, they go in the Zurisack.

Haha, yes, a course could have been useful. You can do a general orientation course through the city (for free?) where you can ask recycling questions. Go to city hall to get the pamphlet with the dates and signups if you don't already have the one they send all new-comers in the mail.

To reassure you, everything that goes into the Zurisack will get sorted again later by hand to be reused as efficiently as possible. Sure, there's a slight environmental impact to using more plastic Zurisacks throughout the year, but beyond that you're not hurting the environment by throwing away reusable plastics and packaging in the Zurisack. You're just paying for the privilege of not having to sort it yourself since not sorting causes you to buy more of those costly Zurisacks. So if doing it all perfectly immediately is too stressful, rest easy because it's really only your pocketbook, not the state of the environment, that is straining a bit when you don't sort perfectly. Using reusable bags at the grocery store and for produce will have a greater saving effect on the environment than the few Zurisacks you'll save per year by worrying over the last few types of waste that don't have accessible recycling points.