The Australian Food and Grocery Council is designing Australia’s largest industry-led scheme to create a circular economy for soft plastic packaging.
The Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) is working to provide a long-term solution to recycling soft plastic waste within Australia.
The National Plastics Recycling Scheme (NPRS), being developed by AFGC, the peak body representing food, beverage and grocery manufacturers, is a product stewardship scheme aimed at creating a circular loop for soft plastics, starting with kerbside collection and flowing all the way through to advanced recycling to make new food-grade plastic packaging.
Tanya Barden, Chief Executive Officer of AFGC, says the scheme is already starting to change Australia’s recycling landscape.
“We have been working with a willing, motivated group, including not only food and grocery manufacturers, but also those local councils, waste collectors and processors, advanced recyclers and plastics manufacturers that see the need for a sustainable soft plastics recycling scheme in Australia,” she says.
“What really strikes me is the passion and drive coming from CEOs of major food and grocery brands that are behind this scheme. The rest of the packaging and resource recovery supply chain should be encouraged by that level of drive and commitment.”
The effects of limited markets for recycled soft plastics were made clear with the collapse of REDcycle. The national in-store collection program ceased operations in November 2022, citing an untenable imbalance between the growing supply and dwindling demand for the collected material.
At the time, industry sources said there was a need for all sectors across the soft plastics supply chain to bridge the gaps in Australia’s recycling infrastructure.
Tanya says the NPRS differs from REDcycle in its scale of collection, development of end markets and governance.
“Soft plastics make up about 40 per cent of all plastic packaging, and while REDcycle was a popular scheme, it collected less than five per cent of consumer soft plastics with the remaining 95 per cent going into landfill,” Tanya says. “The NPRS aims to make soft plastics more convenient for the community by using kerbside collections, which will boost the volumes collected and processed each year.
“We know there are currently market failures in soft plastics collection and processing, in part because of the low value and limited end markets for the material. Stepping in to fund economic gaps in the supply chain is only one aspect of the scheme. We are also using new technologies to get the plastic back into food-grade safe material, which is the big game changer and opens up new end markets.
“We’re very conscious that for the scheme to be effective it needs to include the creation of end markets, not just collection. The final design will also include mechanisms to drive the uptake of recycled content. REDcycle material was going into uses like bollards and benches. We’re creating a circular loop and bringing that material back into consumer packaging and we’re making sure we have targets and reporting that will be transparent and available publicly.”
The AFGC received federal funding to assist in the design of the NPRS project in 2020. Since then, AFGC member companies have signed on as Foundation Supporters of the project, committing funds to enable trials to be conducted.
APR Plastics in Victoria, which operates a pyrolysis plant that breaks soft plastic back into its original oil form, has signed on to process the material collected during the trials. The oil will be sent to a refinery to be further processed so it can be reused in making food-grade plastic films.
The AFGC is also in talks with other processors, including Cleanaway and plastics maker Qenos, who between them have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to conduct an advanced soft plastics recycling feasibility study.
Tanya says advanced recycling, whether it be pyrolysis, or Catalytic Hydrothermal Reactor (Cat-HTR), is being considered because current mechanical recycling technology doesn’t produce the food-grade quality plastics required for packaging. The NPRS is technology neutral and open to working with other processors that can similarly deliver de-contaminated food grade plastic.
She says that since work on the NPRS project began, it has stimulated new commitments for investment in advanced recycling plants. But while there is interest in increasing recycling capacity within Australia, the AFGC is aware any new infrastructure will take time to be installed.
The NPRS will be rolled out to co-ordinate with processing capacity as it comes online.
“We don’t want to end up with a collection market that outstrips demand and results in soft plastics being stockpiled as happened with REDcycle,” Tanya says.
“We’ll be phasing in the program so that collection and recycling opportunities come online together. That may mean we need to use mechanical recycling for some soft plastics in the meantime, but the goal is for it all to go to advanced recycling.
“Industry wants more food-grade recycled plastic. The challenge is the supply is very low globally because of a lack of capacity. In fact, global supply is less than one per cent of global demand. We want to strike the right balance to move quickly and keep pace with the roll-out of capacity and make sure we preserve the integrity of recycling.”
Currently, the project is focused on scalable collection of soft plastics with limited trials of kerbside collection being carried out in six local government areas across Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia.
Households in trial areas received information kits containing plastic recycling bags produced and printed for the trial. Participants fill the bags, close them, and put them in their yellow-lid kerbside recycling bin.
Tanya says the trials are aimed at understanding scheme costings and what bag type will minimise any chances of contamination of mixed recycling, such as soft plastics mixing with paper, and the greatest level of consumer uptake.
“We’re looking at different options to make sure there’s no contamination,” Tanya says.
“We want this to work for the environment but we’re also conscious that we want to make sure we’re not causing any unintended consequences for the recycling system.”
The AGFC considered upscaling instore collection and using container deposit depots for soft plastics collection but, Tanya says, the bag-in-bin option stood out because of its convenience for consumers and cost effectiveness.
The bag-in-bin process has been proven in Belgium and the Netherlands, and results so far in the Australian trials are also positive.
The first trial phase involved about 2000 households in each participating council area. Phase two trials, scheduled for the middle of the year, will expand trials to new areas and more households.
Tanya says learnings from the trials will be used to broaden the scheme into other council areas incrementally.
The AFGC is in discussions with state and federal governments on what role it can play. Tanya says that with government funding the scheme can be rolled out more quickly, subject to processing capacity.
“Collective action is critical,” Tanya says. “A circular economy does require collaboration across many stakeholders and I’m proud of the important role the AFGC is playing in finding a solution.”
For more information, visit: www.afgc.org.au