<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/02/going-to-waste-two-years-after-redcycles-collapse-australias-soft-plastics-are-hitting-the-environment-hard>
"Two years on from REDcycle’s collapse, 94% of Australia’s soft plastics are
still headed for landfill. Collection has restarted at supermarkets, and 42
warehouses of plastics have been cleared, but experts say the packaging
industry must take responsibility for the mess.
By July, supermarkets had mostly cleared the stockpiles, which by November 2022
reached 11,000 tonnes of soft plastics at 44 sites across the country, hoards
accumulated as collections outstripped available recycling capacity and export
restrictions increased the amount of plastic waste in Australia.
The remainder – 3,500 tonnes at two sites, in Victoria and in South Australia –
is due to be processed in the first half of 2026, according to the supermarket
members of the Soft Plastics Taskforce.
But as more than 100 new collection points have been rolled out since June in
selected Woolworths, Coles and Aldi stores across New South Wales and Victoria,
taskforce members have been careful not to collect more than can be processed.
“The biggest challenge still remains that there is simply not enough soft
plastic recycling capacity in Australia to support full, nationwide
collections,” a spokesperson for the taskforce told the
Guardian.
Soft plastic is defined by its ability to be scrunched into a ball, unlike
“rigid” plastics, which are moulded to hold their shape. Even at the peak of
its operations in 2022, REDcycle was collecting about 7,500 tonnes – less than
2% of the 538,000 tonnes of plastic bags, food wrappers, bubble wrap and other
“flexible” plastic waste produced in Australia each year.
“We still have a real problem in that we consume too much [soft plastics], we
discard too much and we don’t buy back anywhere near enough,” says Gayle Sloan,
the chief executive of the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association
of Australia.
While recyclers are increasing their capacity to process the material, Sloan
says other problems remain: the vast quantities produced, design packaging that
is too complex to recover and the lack of demand from packaging companies and
other consumers for Australian-made recycled plastic.
She says the onus should be on plastic manufacturers to invest in facilities to
take back their own material. “We’ve got to stop putting it on consumers to
solve the problem.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
