Major changes to yellow bins being trialled across Australia: Here’s what it could mean for your weekly rubbish collection
- Soft plastics can soon be recycled in municipal bins
- Pilot scheme has been rolled out to municipalities across the country
Soft plastics may soon be allowed in recycling bins with yellow lids under sweeping changes that could come after the collapse of the REDcycle program.
Items such as carrier bags and plastic packaging that can be compressed were previously banned from municipal bins, but that is about to change.
RecycleSmart has recently revived its own separate free collection service for soft plastics from homes in select council areas, including North Sydney.
Meanwhile, Australian recycling company Curby is incorporating soft packaging into existing municipal waste collections using specially labeled yellow plastic bags.
They already have pilot projects underway where householders can collect soft packaging into bright yellow bags that can be placed in yellow trash cans.
Soft plastics may soon be allowed in yellow-lid recycling bins under sweeping changes that could come after the collapse of the REDcycle program
Items such as carrier bags and plastic packaging that can be compressed were previously banned from municipal bins, but that is about to change
The labeled bags can then be easily identified and removed during processing, where they are diverted to specialist recycling plants that turn them into food-safe plastic.
Curby has previously implemented the plan in the NSW Central Coast, Tamworth and Newcastle council areas.
The National Plastic Recycling Scheme, developed by the Australian Food and Grocery Council, is now testing the system in six council areas in Victoria and South Australia.
About 10,000 households in Adelaide, Melbourne, Albury and the Macedon Ranges are now throwing soft plastics into yellow recycling bins.
The aim is to fill the gap following the collapse of REDcycle, which collected soft plastics at Coles and Woolworths until their overseas processors stopped taking Australian waste.
REDcycle crashed in November with huge stockpiles of incendiary plastics left in secret storage centers across the country.
Now Tanya Barden, CEO of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, hopes to revive soft plastic recycling and make it even easier for consumers.
“We’ve looked at options to return to the store, but we need to make it easy and cost-effective,” Ms Barden told news.com.au.
‘We are building a whole new supply chain. It will gradually grow as capacity develops.”
They are currently working with Nestle to recycle the soft plastic, break it down into ‘plasticrude’ oil, to make new plastic wrappers for KitKat cookies.
But the scheme is limited by the capacity of current recycling plants before it can be rolled out across all of Australia’s more than 500 municipalities.
Even at the height of REDcycle, only an estimated two percent of Australia’s soft plastic waste was recycled.
“There’s a lot of complexity involved in designing a collection schedule,” says Ms. Barden. “Now we have to scale this up and we have the industry behind us.
‘We are building a whole new supply chain. It will gradually grow as capacity develops.”
The scheme is intended to fill the gap following the collapse of REDcycle, which collected soft plastics at Coles and Woolworths until their overseas processors stopped taking Australian waste
Curby hopes to include soft packaging in existing municipal bin collections using yellow plastic bags with special labels
APR Plastics Managing Director Darren Thorpe said capturing soft plastics in sufficient quantities is essential for a domestic advanced recycling industry.
‘There is a huge demand for recycled food grade plastic from manufacturers not just here but around the world,’ said Mr Thorpe.
“We have the technology to do that and these trials provide a scalable model that will enable the creation of a sustainable and efficient advanced soft plastics recycling industry here in Australia.”
In the meantime, Nestle has now repackaged Smarties in paper instead of plastic, and Mars has also relaunched its snack bars with paper packaging that goes straight into the bins in an effort to reduce landfill waste.
The company claims the simple switch in Australia saves 360 tonnes of soft plastic – enough to stretch to London and back – each year from going to landfill.
