Recycling in Barcelona

Recycling in Barcelona

Barcelona is very easy to manage your household recycling and colour-coded containers can be found on the majority of street corners.

Street container recycling

On most street corners in all residential areas you will generally find the following bins:

Yellow

Full official list of recyclable items.

This is for certain plastics and metals, such as tin cans, cutlery, scrap metal, old utensils, drinks cartons and other recyclables.

Note: it is not for: polystyrene or other non-recyclable plastics.

Blue

Full official list of recyclable items.

This is strictly for paper and cardboard, magazines, books, newspaper and cardboard packaging.

Note: it is not for wood, furniture, soil or anything else which might seem like it should go in there.

Green

Full official list of recyclable items.

This is only for glass - which includes glass of any colour (green, brown, blue, clear etc…). Make sure to remove corks and bottle tops so that you just insert glass. They also accept glass cosmetic items.

Note: they don’t accept lightbulbs - these would go to the main recycling centre - ‘punto verde’ (see below).

Brown

Full official list of recyclable items.

This is for organic waste, such as food and garden waste.

Note: it isn’t limited to just compostable material, so you can also put things like bones from meat or fish, cork from wine bottles, coffee grounds, tea bags etc. Also, you can put old soil here and roots, leaves, branches…etc, e.g. from plants.

Grey

Full official list of recyclable items.

This is for general waste and anything which cannot be recycled in the other bins.

Check the Barcelona city council website for detailed information.

Punto Verde

For more large-scale recycling you will want to locate what’s called a “punto verde”, which is a dedicated recycling facility that can handle additional items, such as white goods, electronic devices, coffee capsules, oil, oversized items...and much more!. Put your address in on this page to find the closest centre to you.

The punto verde centres also give away free recycling bags. In general they require you to be ‘empadronado’ (a registered resident) in the area, but if you ask nicely then they’ll probably just give you a set for free! Here’s a photo, below.

Household waste and on-street collection

In addition to recycling and general waste, the Barcelona City Council provides an on-street collection service and once a week the refuse service team will go around and collect large items from outside your property. Check their website to find out which day/s they pass by your street or area, but for example it will usually be during a 2-hour period in the evening and tends to be from 8pm - 10pm. Each neighbourhood has its own designated collection days, depending on the type of items, so check their site. There's also more information here.

Recycling Clothes

There are dedicated orange containers for the recycling of clothing and footwear. These are not as obvious but there are usually several in each neighbourhood. To find your closest one, use this link. Here’s a photo below of one in Poblenou as an example.

In here you can put almost any clothing but there are certain conditions, so check this website for more info.

Recycling Batteries

Keep note that some supermarkets also offer recycling, for items such as batteries or used coffee capsules. It is also recommended to take certain items to the punto verde, since they can/may offer you a discount on your water bill (reference needed).