Shinjuku garbage sorting: bags, dates and collection

In Shinjuku, household waste needs to reach the collection point by 8 a.m. on the right day. Your building may let you leave it in a storage area the evening before, or it may ask you to keep it in the apartment until morning. Check the building's instructions alongside the ward calendar so you know when and where to put each bag.

Checked 8 September 2026. This guide follows Shinjuku's household collection rules and its 2026 English guide. If your accommodation uses a private waste company, the manager needs to give you that company's instructions.

Find the calendar for your address

The building manager is the person to ask about your collection point and where waste waits before pickup. Those may be different places. Shinjuku's collection-point page also asks new users of an existing point to contact the waste office or center responsible for the area. Ask that office what you need to do before using the point; the ward does not give one joining form that applies everywhere.

Use the collection point's full address to find the right row in the collection-day table. Read the town name and the numbered blocks beside it. If a row covers only part of a block or has an asterisk beside it, ask the waste office which days apply to you. Nearby addresses can have different collection days, even when they share a station.

Save the collection calendar with a photo of the building sign, including its storage hours. Buildings using containers borrowed from the ward set their own hours for residents to fill them, as the ward's instructions explain. The manager or cleaner then puts them at the designated place by 8 a.m. That may let you leave your recycling downstairs the night before collection.

Keep recyclables separate on resource day

Recycling is collected once a week, on what the ward calls resource day, so an empty bottle can spend several days in your apartment. Give the different materials their own places while you have space to arrange them. That need not mean a row of large bins. Separate see-through bags can do the job for bottles, cans and PET bottles; buildings with the ward's containers or nets use those instead.

For a PET drink bottle, remove the cap and label, then rinse the bottle. Put the bottle with other PET bottles and its plastic cap and label with recyclable plastic. They go out on the same morning, in separate bags. Separating them as you use them saves sorting through a week's recycling before collection.

Leave some space for cardboard too. Under the ward's paper instructions, you flatten it and tie it together, apart from other paper types such as newspapers and magazines. Remove plastic tape and other non-paper material. Flatten delivery boxes as you unpack them so they take up less floor space while you wait for resource day.

Clean plastic and dirty plastic go in different bags

Empty a yogurt cup and wash or wipe it clean before putting it with recyclable plastic. If it stays heavily soiled, put it with combustible waste, which Shinjuku collects twice a week.

Shinjuku's plastic collection takes packaging and some household items made entirely from a single type of plastic. The ward combined them in April 2024. A small household item made only of plastic may go in the same bag as the cleaned cup, depending on how big and thick it is.

The English guide excludes hard items whose plastic is 5 mm thick or more, and items over 30 cm in any dimension. For a plastic box, measure its outside length, width and height separately, then the thickness of the plastic itself. Do not add the three dimensions. The Japanese page describes the size boundary as about 30 cm, so ask the waste office about a product right at that size. Metal parts, electrical parts, batteries and lighters also keep an item out of this bag.

A battery needs a separate place

Keep unwanted power banks out of the plastic recycling bag. Since April 2025, Shinjuku has collected loose small rechargeable batteries and power banks on resource day. The battery instructions say to tape over the terminals or cable sockets and put only these batteries in a separate see-through bag. Leave the power bank assembled.

A swollen or deformed battery goes to the waste office or a waste collection center instead. Ask the office about safe handling before taking it there. If the battery is inside an appliance, follow that appliance's disposal instructions. Don't pry the battery out just to put it in the battery bag.

Save the dates for metal, ceramic and glass

A broken dish stays on a different schedule from the bottles. The metal, ceramic and glass rules require thick paper around sharp or broken items, marked 危険 (kiken — dangerous). Wrap it when it breaks, before it spends time waiting in a bag someone else might move.

Check which pair of collection dates applies to your address. For example, if your collection day were Monday, the calendar would specify the first and third Mondays or the second and fourth Mondays. There would be no collection on a fifth Monday. A reminder that repeats every two weeks will eventually choose the wrong morning; save the actual dates from your calendar.

That wait matters when you are leaving the apartment. Check your last collection dates before packing, and ask the manager what to do with anything that cannot go out before checkout. Large items have their own paid pickup, booked through the ward's bulky-waste service. Some large appliances are excluded; check the English guide before booking. Anything supplied with a furnished room needs the owner's agreement before disposal.

If the instructions disagree or a bag is left behind

Before the first collection, ask the manager when you can use the storage area and who takes the waste to the collection point. If the building sign and ward calendar disagree, show them both. Recheck holiday notices, and if your bag is left with a notice, read it and ask about anything unclear before the next suitable collection.