Recycling waste in Prague

I’ve recently heard a friend of mine praise Prague for how clean the streets are. 

You can imagine that I was surprised by that statement. 

However, it has gotten me to think about it. And recently, I have noticed that the streets are indeed being taken care of. 

(A random picture of a clean street in Prague, close to Masarykovo nádraží)

Of course, a significant part of the process involves the people who actually go around picking up garbage and clearing the waste flooding the streets. Besides all paid personnel, there’s, for example, Martin, who is cleaning the streets of Prague and encouraging others to do so too. Take this as a shout-out to a person who is doing an amazing job and is actually making a change in my eyes.

But making their job simpler is also the system of recycling that is in Prague. In a walkable distance (as stated by the official Prague services website), there are containers for recycled waste. 

Blue, yellow, brown, green, and sometimes gray, too. What do the colours mean? 

Let’s find out. 

Blue is for paper. So newspapers, magazines, notebooks, sheets of paper, cardboard boxes and so on. That all belongs there.

Avoid throwing in wet, dirty or oily paper, which cannot be processed in the recycling process.

Yellow is for plastic, so bottles, packaging, bags, but also drink cartons all belong there. Avoid putting in heavily soiled plastics or items that are not clean from paint, cleaning detergents and so on.

Green is for glass, such as bottles and jars. Do not include ceramics, mirrors, or heat-resistant glass.

Sometimes you will also find a gray one. This colour is for metal, including cans, tins, and aluminum containers. Avoid mixing in non-metal materials or heavily dirty items.

That should be the basic ones. You will see a brown one from time to time; those are for bio waste. But they have to be ordered by a specific household.

Hope you like living in Prague as much as we do, and let's all make sure to make this a nice environment!