On Wednesday, Ipswich Mayor Andrew Antoniolli revealed the city was trashing its recycling program, sending all materials from yellow-top bins into landfill.

The council blamed its move on China's decision to no longer take Australia's recycling waste.

Ipswich said its recycling contractor wanted an extra $2 million a year, which would have led to a 1.5 to 2 per cent rate rise, and "contamination" of non-recyclable materials in bins was unacceptably high.

Cr Antoniolli confirmed Ipswich's yellow-top bin waste had been taken to landfill for the past four weeks, "because we cannot meet the contractor's demands for contamination".

He told ABC Radio Brisbane: "At 50 per cent, trying to reduce it to below their demands, which is less than 25 per cent, it is unachievable."

Cr Antoniolli said the "bottom has dropped out" of the plastics, glass and paper recycling market.

"The only product that is holding its value at the moment are metals, and in particular aluminium," he said.

"The cost to the ratepayers is increasing five-fold."

Cr Antoniolli said other councils would be facing the same decision as Ipswich in the near future.

"The contractor itself will be coming back to renegotiate or at the time the contract falls due, they will be coming back with a five-fold increase or somewhere in that order," he said.

"We will not be the last to do this.

"Recycling as we know it has to change."

Brisbane, Moreton Bay, Logan, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast councils have so far ruled out making any changes to their recycling programs.

But Local Government Association of Queensland CEO Greg Hallam said other councils would likely follow Ipswich's lead, after being faced with four- to five-fold cost increases for recycling.

Queensland Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch said she was disappointed by Ipswich's decision, and said she only found out it had started a month ago on Thursday.

"To find out today that they've been doing that for four weeks, that's just, for me, shocking," Ms Enoch told the ABC.

"We had a governing from the regions in Ipswich almost four weeks ago and certainly the conversation I had with the mayor then, and to be fair, was about waste to energy, but certainly there was no conversation about this impending decision."

But Cr Antoniolli said Ipswich councillors did raise with relevant ministers and the Premier their "intention to look towards other solutions for waste, and in particular waste to energy" when the cabinet was in the city one month ago.

"We mentioned this as a possibility going forward," he said.

LNP leader Deb Frecklington said she was “absolutely appalled” by Ipswich’s decision to stop recycling.

Ms Frecklington said the Ipswich council should have told its residents it started taking the bins to landfill when it happened four weeks ago.

“[And] they should have had a campaign encouraging people to recycle cleanly,” she said.

Ms Frecklington said other councils, such as Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Moreton Bay, were finding a solution.

She described a suggestion by Ms Enoch that the Newman government’s decision to scrap the waste levy in 2012 was partly to blame as “an absolute load of rubbish”.

“Minister Enoch needs to stop blaming everyone else,” she said.

Ms Frecklington did not say whether she would support any move by the Queensland government to offer extra money to councils to deal with the issue, as has happened in NSW and Victoria.

Would you pay more for your rates, or would you rather recycling be dumped in landfill? Tell us what you think in the comments