Sydney Waste By the Numbers: How Big is Our Waste Industry?
Last updated: September 2026
NSW generated 22.4 million tonnes of waste in 2024-25 and recycled 67% of it, the highest resource-recovery rate on record. At household level, that works out to about 23kg of rubbish and recycling put out each week, based on the average NSW home generating 1.2 tonnes of municipal waste a year.
Sydney and NSW, by the numbers
Greater Sydney's population reached 5.64 million people at June 2025, up by about 75,000 (1.4%) over the year. Across the whole of NSW, that growth is being outpaced by waste: the state generated 22.4 million tonnes of waste in 2024-25, a 5% jump on the year before and well above the five-year average of 21.8 million tonnes. On a per-person basis, that works out to 2.61 tonnes of waste for every NSW resident in 2024-25, up from 2.53 tonnes the year before.
Nationally, the most recent full picture is older: Australia generated 75.6 million tonnes of waste in 2022-23, or 2.88 tonnes per person. The national figures lag NSW's by two years because the National Waste Report is compiled every two years; NSW's own 2024-25 numbers are the more current read on where things stand now.
What a Sydney household actually throws out
NSW councils collected 4,183,838 tonnes of municipal waste in 2024-25, of which 1,735,143 tonnes (41%) was recycled. The average NSW household put out 1.2 tonnes of municipal waste over the year: 0.5 tonnes of it recycled and 0.7 tonnes disposed, which comes to roughly 23kg a week between the bins.
Sydney's own share of that is large. The Metropolitan Levy Area, the group of 42 councils across Greater Sydney, the Hunter and the Illawarra that pay the state waste levy, collected 69% of all municipal waste reported in NSW in 2024-25. Of the average household's rubbish, kerbside collection breaks down as 42% from the red general-waste bin, 19% from the green organics bin, 15% taken to a drop-off point, 12% from the yellow recycling bin and 6% from bulky item pickups, with the rest split between street or public bins and Return and Earn container returns.
What's actually in your bin service, and what pushed the numbers up this year
Kerbside bins alone accounted for 3,057,550 tonnes of NSW's municipal waste in 2024-25, 40% of it recycled, with the Metropolitan Levy Area contributing 75% of that total. Most NSW households now have some form of kerbside service: 94% have access to a red general-waste bin and 92% to a yellow recycling bin. Organics collection is less universal: 73% of NSW households have an organics bin of some kind, split between 41% with a garden-organics-only bin and 30% with a combined food-and-garden-organics (FOGO) bin. Councils collected 774,299 tonnes of organic waste through these bins in 2024-25, up 8% on the year before, as more councils roll out FOGO services ahead of a 2030 state deadline requiring it wherever a council runs a residual waste collection.
Part of why NSW's total waste figure jumped 5% in 2024-25 wasn't household behaviour at all: the NSW East Coast Severe Weather event in May 2025 generated a spike in non-recoverable disaster waste that shows up in the same year's numbers, on top of the ordinary year-on-year growth.
How much of it actually gets recycled
NSW recycled 67% of everything it generated in 2024-25, the highest rate on record and up from 63% in 2015-16. But that headline number covers construction, commercial and industrial waste too, and household waste alone doesn't do as well: the municipal solid waste recycling rate is 48%.
The gap makes more sense once you split it by bin. Once something makes it into the right kerbside bin, NSW recycles almost all of it: 90% of what goes in a yellow bin gets recycled, and 98% of what goes in a green organics bin does. The 48% household-wide figure is lower because it also counts everything put in the red general-waste bin, which is 42% of the average household's total and goes straight to disposal. The gap between "recycled once collected" and "recycled overall" is a sorting problem, not a processing one.
Nationally, the long-run trend points the same way. Australia's recycling rate has climbed from 7% in 1996 to more than 60% today, and the total tonnes recycled each year has grown from 1.5 million to 43 million over the same 30 years. To see how Australia sits against other nations, take a look at the ranking of countries that produce the most waste.
Where NSW's waste actually comes from
Household bins are only part of the total. Nationally, municipal waste from households and local councils makes up 18% of everything generated (13.5 million tonnes, or 512kg per person), against 44% from commercial and industrial sources and 39% from construction and demolition. Businesses and building sites, not households, produce most of the country's waste by weight; what ends up at the kerb is the smaller share. For more figures on what Sydney households throw out, see these facts and stats about refuse items.
Most of what shows up in these figures moves through a council bin. What doesn't fit one (old furniture, appliances, renovation offcuts, a full garage clear-out) needs a different route. See household rubbish removal for a same-day option.
