Recycling has been around for decades and each week Australians religiously fill their recycling bins with paper and glass products. But there is a wide range of items that have become recyclable over time that you may not be aware of.

Jenni Downes is a research consultant at UTS' Institute for Sustainable Futures. She says while recycling rates are rising they aren't climbing as steadily as councils would wish.

"A key reason for this is because what is recyclable and what isn't has changed a lot since recycling was first introduced," she says. "Our notion about what can be recycled was entrenched in the early stages of the recycling programs but so much has changed since then. Therefore there is a lot of material that is not being recycled that could be."

More unusual items that aren't being recycled regularly include mobile phones, fluorescent globes, paint, spectacles and medicines. While they are recyclable, you cannot recycle them through your kerbside collections.

"When people hear something is recyclable they automatically feel they can do it through their yellow bins," Downes says. "But for a lot of these products you need to take a different action. For example, for items like spectacles and medicine, there are specific programs that allow you to drop them off at a collection point or post them to a recycler. And electronic products and furniture are recyclable via council drop-offs or pick-up points, or through clean-up events."

Downes says more education is also needed around common items that have become recyclable over time.

"For example, in the past the type of plastic that could go in the recycle bin was quite limited," she says. "But now any plastic that is rigid - that is, if you squeeze it it reverts back to its original shape - can go in."

Another item that creates confusion is aluminium foil.

"If you save small pieces of foil until you get a ball that's bigger than a golf ball you can put it into a recycling bin," Downes says. "But the two that really confuse people are tissues and napkins. The process they have gone through to make them absorbent means they're not recyclable."

The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) offers two services designed to help residents safely recycle the more unusual or hazardous items in their household: Household Chemical CleanOut and Community Recycling Centres.

The Household Chemical CleanOut events are free, drive-through events held throughout the year, where residents can drop off a range of household chemicals like cleaners as well as garden chemicals and poisons. Community Recycling Centres are permanent places where residents can drop off household problem waste items like paint, gas bottles, batteries and oils. Both of these services take the items that can't be collected via council kerbside collections.

Kathy Giunta, the EPA's director of waste and resource recovery, said both services provide a safe way to dispose of wastes and chemicals that could cause harm to the environment if not disposed of correctly.

"You may not realise it, but most household items are recyclable and there are a number of options for recycling the more unusual materials around the house," she says.

She adds there are also other programs for the recyclables that can't be left out for kerbside collections, such as TerraCycle, which offer free programs that deal with recycling hard-to-recycle waste.

For example, TerraCycle offers a program through L'Oreal that takes any makeup back, no matter what brand. "They also have an arrangement with Nespresso to take coffee pods, and one for toothbrushes and toothpastes," Giunta says.

Lions Australia runs the Recycle for Sight program, which each year collects close to 600,000 pairs of used spectacles, lenses and some medical support equipment. After the glasses are cleaned and relabelled, they are distributed to people in need overseas.

Downes says it's important to know that many unusual items can be recycled - it just requires a little bit more effort.

"People will do the right thing as long as it's not too difficult, and if the messaging is right about how to recycle the tricky items, then it makes it much easier," she says.