Approximately 40 of Australia’s largest brands are voluntarily supporting soft plastic recycling in Australia. The Australian Government has proposed packaging regulatory reforms including; packaging design standards, including the inclusion of recycled content and designing for packaging recyclability together with targeted collection and recycling rates. Governments at national and state levels are also incentivising companies to invest in building new sorting and recycling facilities for soft plastics. All of this is very positive, but more needs to be done.

Product stewardship schemes aim to address market failures through collective action to fund recycling solutions. In most schemes, producers pay a levy to a product stewardship scheme administrator which coordinates and funds the scheme to undertake collection, recycling, marketing and other activities.

Subject to ACCC authorisation, SPSA plans to engage a portfolio of recyclers to facilitate the production of a range of products from the collected plastics, including mechanical and chemical recycling options.  Advanced chemical recycling breaks plastic down into a virgin oil substitute that can be used to make food-grade soft plastic packaging, reducing the use of virgin materials, and creating a truly circular soft plastic supply chain. Other products from mechanical recycling include garbage bags, fence posts, asphalt, and concrete additives.

Pending positive results from the pilots currently being undertaken by the Australian Food & Grocery Council (AFGC) and Soft Plastics Taskforce, and subject to ACCC authorisation, SPSA will continue to work with stakeholders to design a national program.  Importantly, collections can only be expanded in line with recycling capacity and demand for the recycled products, which remains very limited in Australia. This is why it is essential to bring together industry to participate in the proposed scheme.