ReuseWhakamahi Anō

Love You, Bye. How would you say goodbye to materials if recycling were a love language?

Love You, Bye is a recycling label system for Aotearoa. One mark for every material, in English and te reo Māori, the same on the pack, the bin and the truck. Labels you learn once are how a circular system starts.

Try

The round trip

One mark, all the way round.

The mark on the pack is the mark on the bin and the mark on the truck. Learn it once and it works everywhere.

Following: A plastic bottle

On the packThe mark names the material, in English and te reo Māori.
In the binThe same mark on the bin, so the match is instant.
On the truckAnd on the truck, so the system shows on every street.
Back againSorted right, it comes back as something new.

Pictures of the proposal. No council or brand carries the marks yet.

The pieces exist. They were never joined up.

Aotearoa already has bin colours agreed in 2015, one national list of what kerbside recycling takes since 2024, and 52 bilingual symbols for bins. Each works on its own. None matches the next, so nothing you learn at the pack helps at the bin.

97%

of us recycle

86%

think it’s worth getting right

61%

check where it goes at the bin, not at the shop

Ministry for the Environment, behavioural trend monitoring, 2025.

The Australasian Recycling Label

The ARL decides. The mark carries that decision to the bin.

The ARL is careful work, backed by a real assessment of what can be recycled. But it speaks to one pack at a time. It doesn’t name the material, it isn’t in the bin’s colour, and it never appears on the bin, so you read it fresh every time.

Love You, Bye keeps that assessment and gives it a mark to travel in. The ARL decides which mark a pack may carry, so a plastic-lined cup never wears the paper mark, and the same mark is waiting on the bin.

Nō hea ngā tohu · Where the marks come from

It works: Norway already does it.

Norway puts one set of sorting labels on its packaging, on bins at home and at work, and at recycling stations. They belong to a Nordic family that began in Denmark, and the EU is now writing the idea into law.

7 in 10

Norwegians say they know the sorting labels

Sortere, 2024

15%

less rubbish when a Copenhagen trial swapped bin signs for the pictograms

Cirkulær, 2024

2029

the earliest EU bins for packaging must carry harmonised labels

EU packaging regulation

Love You, Bye adapts Norway’s sorting labels for Aotearoa: New Zealand’s material streams and agreed recycling colours, English first with te reo Māori beneath. Iconographic attribution is extended to Sortere.

The marks

97 ways to say goodbye.

A mark for every material, English first with te reo Māori beneath. Point at one, or use the arrow keys, to see it up close.

PET Bottles

Pātara PET

Plastic · Kerbside

See it in the archive: PET Bottles Download SVG: PET Bottles

For councils and brands

Put them on your bins and your packs.

Every mark is free to download and use, with credit to Sortere. SVG and print-ready files in English and te reo Māori, with guidelines for colour, type and layout.

Download the toolkit (ZIP, 6.9 MB)Read the guidelines

Planning a large print run or a product? Confirm terms with LOOP first. The te reo Māori names are drafts until a fluent reviewer signs them off.