Soft Plastic Recycling should be too big to fail

With the burden of managing plastic disposal typically on local councils and municipalities across Australia, Hornsby Shire Council is now one of the many councils facing a soft plastics recycling crisis.

The collapse in November 2022 of soft plastics recycler, REDcycle, along with the earlier Global Recycling Crisis which saw China and other countries cease accepting plastics from Western countries, made the task of efficiently recycling soft plastic in Australia almost impossible.

A global comparison of plastics waste management was released in October 2021 with Australia scoring 7th place for its efforts to control plastic pollution, behind European countries, Japan, the UK and the US.

Shane Cucow, Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) plastics expert noted “this landmark global index shows that Australia needs to rapidly accelerate action to save our ocean wildlife from being buried in plastic.”

While Australia was found to be performing above the global average, it ranked poorly for efficient collection and sorting of plastic (16th place), plastic waste management (14th place) and private sector commitments (10th place).

The closure of the REDcycle service - which collected soft plastics from Coles and Woolworths has meant that many councils in Australia and residents are struggling to find alternative collection services for their soft plastics as they try to maintain their recycling practices.

The REDcycle Program - developed and implemented by RED Group, a Melbourne-based consulting and recycling company, was described as “a true product stewardship model where manufacturers, retailers and consumers are sharing responsibility in creating a sustainable future.”

The REDcycle Program included more than 2,000 drop-off points at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets across Australia and according to their website, they have collected over 900 million pieces of soft plastic. They estimate they collect up to 5 million items per day, equalling 7000 tonnes per year.

According to media reports, the first issue that REDcycle faced was a fire on the production line at the Close the Loop production line in Melbourne in June 2022. The fire destroyed the production line, and it won’t be replaced and re-operational until 2023.

Close the Loop had apparently been transforming hundreds of tonnes of this soft plastic into an additive and binding agent for asphalt.

The only mass-use end product that REDcycle could find for their recycled soft plastic anywhere in the country was for roads.

Prior to the fire in June, REDcycle had faced an issue with one of their buyers, Plastic Forests, having a change in circumstance and stopping taking plastic from REDcycle in February 2021.

A week before the collection suspension in November 2022, their remaining buyer, Replas (who make garden benches, traffic bollards and play equipment with the plastic) stopped accepting the material, saying they had an oversupply and also that they are planning to phase out the material.

After the June fire, REDcycle had apparently been quietly stockpiling this plastic as they looked for other options.

The REDcycle program collapsed in November 2022 after revelations by The Age that hundreds of millions of bags and other soft plastic items dropped off by customers at Coles and Woolworths were being secretly stockpiled in warehouses and not recycled.

Stockpiles of soft plastic were uncovered by the EPA investigators in Victoria, South Australia and NSW.

Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority uncovered 3000 tonnes of waste at seven sites, including warehouses in Melbourne’s north and west and at West Wodonga in the state’s north.

Plastic bags were being stored at sites in the Melbourne suburbs of Tottenham, Williamstown North, Truganina, West Footscray, Campbellfield and Tullamarine.

The NSW Environmental Protection Authority uncovered nine sites where soft plastics were being stored.

NSW EPA Chief Executive, Tony Chappel noted “The NSW EPA has been investigating potential soft plastics stockpile sites across NSW and identified nine sites, with five of these locations storing the bulk of approximately 3300 tonnes of soft plastics waste.”

Chappel said it was disappointing to see the mismanagement of plastics that consumers believed were being recycled appropriately.

It issued 191 notices to the company to provide information to help identify any additional stockpiles and said it was working with councils and firefighters to manage risks.

South Australia’s environmental authority also discovered about 1500 tonnes of soft plastics from REDcycle in two Adelaide warehouses.

Following the announcement of REDcycle’s collapse in November 2022, Federal Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek commented “I was very surprised to learn of the extent of the stockpiling. This is a huge amount of waste, an absolutely huge amount of waste. And I am very concerned about the immediate options for dealing with this waste.

“Australian governments, particularly at the most recent meeting of environment ministers, are very keen to see progress on recycling targets. We recommitted at that last environment ministers meeting to pursue in the strongest way advances in recycling. Our own government has set aside close to a quarter of a billion dollars to invest in new recycling infrastructure including $60 million set aside in particular to address this issue of hard to recycle plastics.

“We see that states and territories have also been working hard to remove plastics, plastic bags from shopping, plastic cutlery, plastic takeaway containers, plastic ear buds, microbeads from cosmetics. A lot of these are being banned or phased out, and that’s a great step forward.

“What we need to see now is greater industry commitment to getting rid of some of these problematic plastics. And I’ve spoken to Coles and Woolworths today and the Food and Grocery Council about the responsibility that these businesses have first of all to reduce the amount of packaging, to replace packaging where they can with less environmentally destructive packaging types and then also to recycle the packaging that they’re producing. These businesses are producing an enormous amount of waste and they have to take responsibility for how that waste is disposed of. Coles and Woolies agree they do feel the need and the responsibility to take action here, and I’ve said that the Australian government stands ready to assist them in taking that action.”

Now in January 2023, due to the scarcity of alternative collection systems in Sydney, Councils such as Hornsby are trying to help residents with their soft plastic recycling but are becoming overwhelmed with the need of their service. From 27th January 2023, users of Hornsby Shire Council’s Community Recycling Centre (CRC) at Thornleigh will need to demonstrate they reside in the Local Government Area (LGA) by showing a copy of their NSW driver licence or rates notice in order to recycle soft plastics, hard plastics and Styrofoam. Quantity limits for residents of one normal shopping bag full of soft plastics (40cmx40cm bag) per week have also been put into place.

Hornsby Council’s CRC, which has a viable soft plastics recycling service, has faced an unprecedented spike in users of the facility. The quantity of soft plastics has more than doubled since November 2022 and based on the increasing trend, it is estimated the CRC facility will accept around 50-80 tonnes of soft plastic material over the next twelve months.

Council has established a strong partnership with Plasmar, a plastics recycling specialist, which sorts soft plastics, pelletises them and then makes a broad range of products including posts, boards, sleepers, bollards, wheel stops and other construction materials. Plasmar’s Sydney factory has a limited capacity to accept soft plastics generated by our community and, with the rapidly increasing demand on its services, needs to urgently cap the quantities being accepted. Plasmar must ensure it only accepts quantities of soft plastics its manufacturing plant can process and that the products it produces can find resale markets to ensure a sustainable business.

Hornsby Shire Council’s Manager, Waste Management notes “restricting our reception of soft and hard plastics and Styrofoam to residents of Hornsby Shire is the first lever we have to pull in an effort to ensure that our recycling processes are not overwhelmed.”

Residents from outside Hornsby Shire will no longer be able to drop off their soft plastics, hard plastics and Styrofoam at the Thornleigh CRC. Residents from outside the Shire should contact their local council to find out more about recycling services within their LGA.

Hornsby Council Mayor, Philip Ruddock has called on both the State and Federal Governments to do more to urgently address the soft plastics crisis.

“Both State and Federal levels of government have Plastics Action Plans and it is critical that further funds are invested in recycling services that allow the sorting, processing and remanufacturing of our soft plastics into beneficial products that can be used in our circular economy,” Mayor Ruddock said.

“It is time that government looks to regulate the packaging industry and to heavily invest in the necessary remanufacturing facilities that can turn our waste into useful resources.

“If our recycling systems are going to meet community demand, State and Federal Governments must invest in the rapid expansion of soft and hard plastics sorting and remanufacturing facilities such as Plasmar’s”.

Conservation organisations such as Greenpeace and the Australian Marine Conservation Society note plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time, with the impacts growing more severe every day.

The first session of UN negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty — also known as INC-1 (Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee) — concluded in Punta del Este, Uruguay on December 2nd, 2022.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said the agreement is the most important international multilateral environmental deal since the Paris climate accord. But, the kind of plastics treaty our world needs can’t mirror the Paris climate accord — we need universal, binding rules for all countries who chose to ratify the treaty, instead of voluntary national commitments.

Important conversations and interventions were made at INC-1. For example, entire regions voiced urgency and ambition in the global plastics treaty negotiations. Coalitions have been built to provide expert perspectives to negotiators and demand a just transition for workers. Many countries — and even Break Free from Plastic brand audit’s top plastic polluters Nestle and Unilever — are now talking about a full lifecycle approach addressing plastic from when it was produced until its disposal. Importantly, several country delegations cited human rights as one of the objectives of the plastics pollution treaty.

Greenpeace advise “Not-so-good interventions were also made. Some governments slowed down the process through lengthy discussions of moot procedures and processes. In a huge conflict of interest, the private sector continues to have far too much influence over these negotiations, including the polluters responsible for the global plastic pollution crisis.

“We need a solution that matches the scale of the problem. That means a global treaty that includes the entire life cycle of plastic, from extraction to disposal. We need a strong global plastics treaty that dramatically cuts plastic production by establishing global legally-binding control measures and eliminating false solutions, like chemical recycling and incineration, which allow the top plastic polluters like Coca-Cola and big oil and petrochemical companies like Exxon to continue flooding the world with even more plastic. A strong treaty is a regulatory tool to finally hold corporations accountable to mandatory measures instead of voluntary corporate pledges that fail.”

Shane Cucow, AMCS plastics expert adds that for Australia, a large part of the problem was that Australia had avoided dealing with the problem for so long.

“For too long, Australia’s governments ignored the problem, shipping our plastic waste overseas for other countries to deal with. Now that they’ve stopped taking our trash, our inadequate recycling infrastructure is now completely overwhelmed and we’re scrambling to catch up.

“Yet recycling alone won’t solve the problem. At the end of the day, despite good intentions most companies are still producing more plastic packaging than we can ever hope to recover.

“While some states have taken critical steps such as banning dangerous single-use plastics, as a nation we are still relying too heavily on companies taking voluntary action – an approach which has proven to be a failure time and time again.

“To take the lead, Australia needs to set mandatory targets for cutting plastic, introduce incentives to reduce the use of virgin plastics, and we must rapidly accelerate our efforts to build the modern recycling and composting infrastructure that we are missing.”

Images top and centre. Credit EPA; Image top: Hornsby CRC soft plastics. Credit Hornsby Council