Recycling in Spain: How the Bin System Works for Expats (2026)

Spain is working towards an ambitious sustainable future, but its success starts with your everyday habits. This guide simplifies the seemingly complex five-container waste system, explains how to handle specialized items like oil and medicines, and shows you how to give a second life to your belongings. By mastering these simple steps, you become an active part of the nation's effort to significantly reduce waste and protect the beautiful Spanish environment.

You turn a yogurt pot over and there it is, a tiny drawing of a bin and the words Al contenedor amarillo, on some labels just al amarillo. Down on the street there are five containers in five colours, and your neighbour has just posted a greasy pizza box into the blue one without a second thought. Is that allowed? It is. If the rules feel slippery, that's not your fault. Spain sets the colours nationally, but the details belong to your ayuntamiento, the town hall, so the next town may do things differently. Start with the label.

What "al amarillo" means and what goes in the yellow bin

Al amarillo literally means "into the yellow one". Al is a + el, and the word contenedor is simply dropped, the way you'd say "chuck it in the yellow". The label comes from Ecoembes, which runs household packaging recycling in Spain. Since 1 January 2025 household packaging has to say which bin it belongs in (Real Decreto 1055/2022, art. 13.2), so you now see it on almost everything.

The yellow bin is for light packaging (envases ligeros), not for "plastic" in general.

• Yes: plastic bottles, tubs, trays, wrappers and bags; food and drink cans, aerosols, foil and metal lids; milk and juice cartons (briks); small wooden boxes, like the ones strawberries come in (Ecoembes).
• No: toys, buckets, kitchen utensils, disposable cutlery, coffee capsules with the grounds still inside, glass, paper and cardboard.

The test is one question. Did this thing wrap or hold something you bought? Then it goes al amarillo. If it is the thing you bought, say a broken toy or an old frying pan, it goes somewhere else, even if it's pure plastic. And skip the rinsing, because Ecoembes asks you to empty packaging, not wash it. Older guides also mention RECICLOS, an Ecoembes app that gave prize-draw points for cans and bottles in the yellow bin. It has been discontinued, and its website now just says RECICLOS ya no está disponible ("RECICLOS is no longer available").

The five bins and what goes in each

Spain started separating rubbish in 1982, when the first green glass igloos appeared in Madrid's Moratalaz district (Ecovidrio). Today a typical street has five containers, one per material, and the system is called recogida selectiva, separate collection.

Blue bin for paper and cardboard (contenedor azul)

Newspapers, magazines, cereal and shoe boxes, paper bags and cardboard egg boxes go here (Ecoembes). So do pizza boxes, grease stains and all (Ecoembes), once you've shaken out the leftover crusts. Flatten boxes (plegar las cajas) before you post them, because a box left whole fills the container and blocks the slot for whoever comes next. Used paper napkins and dirty kitchen roll don't belong here; they go in the brown bin.

Yellow bin for packaging (contenedor amarillo)

Plastic packaging, cans and drink cartons. The full list and the "packaging or product" test are at the top of this guide.

Green bin for glass (contenedor verde)

The green container is usually a rounded bell that everyone calls the iglú. It takes glass packaging only, meaning bottles, jars and small bottles such as perfume flasks. Take the lids off first, since metal and plastic ones go in the yellow bin.

No: drinking glasses, window glass, mirrors, light bulbs, porcelain and ceramic hob tops (Ecovidrio). Glasses, mirrors and window glass go to the punto limpio (more on it below). Glass medicine bottles don't belong here either; take them to the pharmacy (see below).

Brown bin for food and garden waste (contenedor marrón)

This is the youngest bin. Catalonia made it compulsory for its municipalities in 2008 (Agència de Residus de Catalunya). Madrid and València rolled it out citywide by 2020 and 2021. Since Ley 7/2022 every town must have one, those over 5,000 people from 30 June 2022 and the rest from the end of 2023.

Yes (Madrid's list, and a typical one): fruit and vegetable scraps, meat and fish leftovers, eggshells, seafood shells and nutshells, coffee grounds and used tea, used napkins and dirty kitchen roll, small amounts of plants and flowers. No: cooking oil, nappies, wet wipes, pet waste and cat litter, because they spoil the compost (Ayuntamiento de Madrid).

Grey bin for everything else (resto)

The grey container (in Madrid, often a grey bin with an orange lid) takes what fits nowhere else. That means nappies, sanitary pads, wet wipes, cigarette butts, floor sweepings, pet waste, cat litter and hair (Ayuntamiento de Madrid).

Your town may do it differently

The five colours above are the national baseline, and the details are local. The waste law (Ley 7/2022, art. 25) tells municipalities what to collect separately: paper, metal, plastic, glass and food waste, and since the end of 2024 also textiles, used cooking oil, hazardous household waste and bulky items. How is up to each town, whether with street containers, door-to-door collection (puerta a puerta) or closed "smart" bins. Four examples:

• In Madrid, many buildings keep their own grey bins with coloured lids, yellow for packaging, brown for organic and orange for everything else. They go out on the pavement no earlier than an hour before a daytime pickup, or from 22:00 if pickup is at night (Ordenanza 12/2022, art. 46).
• In Barcelona's Sant Andreu de Palomar, door-to-door collection turned the yellow fraction into "recyclables", so any plastic or metal object goes in, packaging or not, even a small pan, keys or a broken plastic toy (Ajuntament de Barcelona).
• In Vitoria-Gasteiz the brown bin is locked and opens with the municipal citizen card (TMC) or the Ireki app (Ayuntamiento de Vitoria-Gasteiz).
• In València the current ordinance lets you use the recycling containers at any hour, but the grey one only from 20:00 until the truck comes (Ordenanza de Limpieza Urbana, art. 39). The city was pushing a new ordinance through in 2026, so double-check on valencia.es.

If your neighbour does it differently from this guide, they aren't necessarily wrong, because for your street the rule is whatever your ayuntamiento's waste page says.

Oil, medicines, electronics and bulky items

Used cooking oil (aceite de cocina usado)

Never pour it down the sink, where the fat coats the pipes and makes wastewater harder to treat. Let the oil cool, pour it into a closed plastic bottle and take it to an oil container. In València they stand in municipal markets, schools and other council buildings. The bottle must hold less than 2.5 litres, and the city's geoportal shows where the containers are (Ajuntament de València). Madrid publishes its oil points on an open-data map, and a comunidad de propietarios (the building's owners' association) with over 200 residents or 100 homes can ask for a dedicated container (Ayuntamiento de Madrid).

Medicines (medicamentos)

Expired or unwanted medicines go to the Punto SIGRE, the collection point you'll find in pharmacies, together with their boxes, blister packs and bottles, empty or not. The one thing it doesn't take is needles and other sharps (SIGRE).

Batteries, bulbs and electronics

Buying a new appliance? The shop has to take your old one of the same type for free, at the till or when it delivers the new one, under a 2015 royal decree on electrical waste (Real Decreto 110/2015, art. 22). Shops with at least 400 m² of electrical goods must also take very small devices (nothing over 25 cm on any side, like an old phone) free and without a purchase. Batteries, fluorescent tubes and other hazardous waste go to the punto limpio.

Puntos limpios, the council's recycling centres

Anything bigger or more awkward goes to the punto limpio, and the name changes from city to city. Barcelona has Punts Verds (neighbourhood, area and mobile ones), and València has ecoparques, including mobile ones that spend a day in each neighbourhood. Madrid's fixed puntos limpios, for example, take up to 120 kg of rubble from small home repairs (about four small sacks), five bulky items such as mattresses or furniture, and 150 kg of wood. Car tyres they don't take.

Clothes, furniture and second-hand

Since the end of 2024 clothes have separate containers too. In Madrid you'll find them in the street, at markets and at puntos limpios (Ayuntamiento de Madrid). Put clothes and shoes in a closed bag.

Furniture and bulky items (muebles y enseres)

Before you haul an old sofa to the punto limpio, book the free pickup, and put things out only on the agreed day. In Madrid you request it on 010 (914 800 010 from outside the city), in the Madrid Móvil app or on Avisos Madrid. The limit is six items and 3 m³, left next to the nearest containers at the agreed time (Ayuntamiento de Madrid). València also uses 010 (963 100 010 from outside), with up to five items left outside your building and no whole-flat clearances (Ajuntament de València).

Selling and buying second-hand (segunda mano)

To sell, start with Wallapop, where people in Spain list second-hand anything, from sofas to prams. For clothes, try Vinted. If you'd rather not deal with strangers online, Cash Converters shops buy and sell electronics, jewellery and tools over the counter.

Wasted food and restaurant leftovers

Spain wasted 1,125 million kilos of food and drink in 2024, 24.38 kilos per person, and 97.5% of it at home (MAPA). Eating out is the easy place to cut some of that. Under Ley 1/2025 on food waste, art. 8, restaurants must let you take home what you didn't eat at no extra cost, buffets excepted, and they may charge only for a single-use plastic container. Just ask ¿Me lo pones para llevar? ("Could you pack this up for me?").

Shopping with less packaging

Plastic bags are never free at a Spanish till. Free ones were banned in July 2018, and thin ones in 2021 unless they're compostable (Real Decreto 293/2018). Bigger supermarkets also have more loose food, because a 2022 royal decree makes any food shop of 400 m² or more give at least 20% of its sales area to products without primary packaging (Real Decreto 1055/2022, art. 7).

Shops selling fresh food have to accept your own clean containers, so hand your táper (plastic tub) across the butcher's counter or the charcutería (deli counter) at the mercado municipal, the covered council market. Bars and restaurants, for their part, must always offer tap water free (Ley 7/2022, art. 18). A bolsa de tela (cloth bag) and a couple of táperes cover most of it, and the Go Zero Waste map shows shops that sell a granel, loose by weight.

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