Integrated plastic packaging manufacturer and recycling company Pact Group has won the Circular Economy Award at this year’s Chemistry Australia Industry Awards for its efforts to recycle the equivalent of half a billion used milk bottles a year and turn them into new bottles.
The used milk bottles and other dairy containers are collected from household recycling bins and then processed at the Pact-operated Circular Plastics Australia (CPA) recycling plant in Melbourne suburb Laverton.
The CPA facility, a joint venture with Cleanaway Waste Management, opened earlier in 2024 and can recycle up to 20,000 tonnes of used high density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) packaging each year at full operational capacity. This equates to about half a billion two-litre milk bottles.
The facility converts materials into food and non-food grade resins. The recycled resin will be used at Pact’s packaging manufacturing facilities in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth which are being upgraded to enable an increase in the amount of recycled content used to make HDPE milk bottles.
Recycling plastic helps divert used packaging from landfill and contributes to lowering carbon emissions by replacing virgin resin produced from fossil fuels. Recycled plastic is also 2.2 times less emissions intensive than virgin fossil fuel plastic.
The 2024 Chemistry Australia Industry Awards were announced at a gala event at the Grand Hyatt Melbourne on 1 May. Incitec Pivot and Schutz Australia were also finalists in the circular economy category.
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