The future of soft plastics recycling in Australia is taking shape as the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) works with the entire packaging supply chain to create a national scheme supported by business, government and consumers.
Tanya Barden, Chief Executive Officer of the AFGC, says engagement with all parts of the new circular economy of soft plastic recycling will be critical to further refine the design of a ground-breaking, industry-led product stewardship scheme for soft plastic packaging.
The AFGC has led the development of the National Plastics Recycling Scheme (NPRS) for the past four years. In September, 2023, the AFGC held the National Soft Plastic Summit in Canberra, where it released details of several reports highlighting progress so far.
Speaking after the event, Tanya described the NPRS as some of the best collaborative work currently happening in product stewardship around the globe.
“There is a genuine shift in efforts across the entire supply chain to improve systems for recycling soft plastics,” Tanya says.
“Continuing to put soft plastics into landfill is not a good option for the environment or the economy. We really have to make this work.”
The NPRS will largely revolve around kerbside collection, using a special-purpose bag for household soft plastic, supplemented by other channels which could include return to store and other collection methods for regional areas.
Financial contributions by brand owners will be used to fund collection and processing of soft plastic packaging, with the aim of recycling the material into food-grade plastics for new packaging.
Tanya says soft plastics are increasingly used by the food and grocery industry because they provide good barrier protection properties, which helps to preserve products, and have a lower environmental footprint than many alternatives.
However, there has been no end-of-life solution that creates circularity. While some soft plastics have been recycled for use in road base, concrete and bollards, many brand owners want to use the material back in their packaging, but can’t do that safely with existing recycling technology. New, advanced chemical or mechanical recycling infrastructure is critical to developing soft plastic circularity.
The collapse of in store collection service REDcycle in 2022 has drawn government and community attention to the issue and accelerated expectations of getting a more robust scheme in place.
Tanya says the AFGC is working with all supply chain partners to ramp up collection methods in line with processing capacity to avoid a situation where material collected exceeds end market demand.
“We’re sending a strong signal to the processing industry that we’re genuine and committed to this scheme, to help give them confidence to invest in the gaps in processing technology,” she says.
She says an important aspect of the scheme is that it will require brand owners to comply with packaging design obligations that increase recyclability, and obligations to use recycled content. Those who don’t will pay a financial penalty, which will help incentivise a behavioural change where brands consider the types of packaging they’re using.
There is a lot of complexity to develop a robust, large-scale product stewardship scheme for soft plastic, with work over the past four years including cost benefit analysis, business cases, scheme and governance design and kerbside collection trials.
The National Soft Plastic Summit was a chance to engage and update the entire supply chain, covering brand owners, retailers, all levels of government, waste collectors and processors, environmental groups and packaging companies.
The NPRS has involved trials of kerbside collection across six council areas in 2022 and 2023.
Tanya says an independent audit of the trials by MRA Consulting Group shows there was good community participation and negligible contamination, both in the bag of soft plastics and in the co-mingled kerbside recycling bins where bagged soft plastics were placed. The trials also tested different format bags to determine which performed better.
The results, she says, give confidence that material recovery facilities (MRFs) are an effective way to collect and sort soft plastic from the rest of household recycling without negatively impacting existing recycling schemes and facilities.
The AFGC recognises the need for upgrades to MRFs for more effective separation and pre-sorting. Money raised in the scheme will be used to help offset some of those costs.
A separate analysis of consumer research has provided information that will help refine the scheme. It found one in three people who participated in the scheme weren’t previous REDcycle users – highlighting the potential to increase the amount of material collected.
“We know consumers are highly engaged with soft plastics – they want to participate, they want a solution,” Tanya says. “There was some richness in their responses.”
Respondents said they found the scheme convenient, simple, and that it increased their motivation to recycle because they could see a reduction in their general waste.
The research also showed the community wants more information about where the bags of soft plastics go, and what goes in the bags, including whether material needs to be washed.
A third report, an independent assessment of the maturity of the NPRS design by Deloitte, points to a scheme with a strong foundation.
Tanya says the summit and report findings will lay the groundwork for deeper consultation and scheme refinement going forward, including larger pilots, consumer research and engaging with governments to show that kerbside collection of soft plastic packaging is viable. She adds that regulatory processes will also be important to the scheme’s success.
“This isn’t just about brands funding a scheme to continue business as usual. In order to use recycled content, brands need to have confidence around the origin and quality of material. There need to be standards and traceability in place throughout the whole recycling supply chain.”
A panel at the summit included representatives from across the entire supply chain. Tanya says when the panel was asked what’s needed to make the scheme work, all of the responses were similar: get the economics right, have offtake agreements in place, be able to collect the feedstock and make sure there is a demand for recycled content, as well as ensuring certainty of what’s recyclable through standards and traceability.
“All of these elements are happening in unity,” she says. “There’s recognition in the supply chain of the urgency and moving with haste but doing it in a measured and sensible way.
“We’re trying to build a whole new way of doing business for soft plastic recycling and we don’t want to cause any unintended consequences. We are therefore taking our time to test and learn to make sure the scheme is robust and credible and that we don’t get ahead of the supply chain which needs to invest in new processing infrastructure.”
For more information, visit: www.afgc.org.au
