July 2024
- Special Award
- Sustainability Leaders
Showing the way: Major brands embrace new recycling symbols
Making it easier for households to recycle packaging for food and consumer goods has won Australasian Recycling Labels a special award for Education Enabler.
- Alexandra Cain
April 2024
- Opinion
- Recycling
Plastic recycling needs to be freed from the oil price cycle
Until it’s always cheaper to use repurposed materials, the industry has little hope of success.
- Steve Hardman
October 2023
Why your Lululemon yoga pants could be a good investment
An Australian start-up has found a way to turn plastics otherwise destined for landfill into yoga pants and T-shirts. And fashion brands are seeing an opportunity.
- Julie Hare
September 2023
This fintech lets you pay for fuel with bitcoin
A small, but growing, cohort of consumers is tapping their crypto wallets to pay for fuel, powered by a local payments innovation.
- Tess Bennett
August 2023
Brilliant ideas rejected as scheme overwhelmed by demand
Dozens of researchers with ideas ready to be commercialised say they have been rejected from a fund designed to do exactly that.
- Julie Hare
Cadbury owner’s plan to stop importing waste for chocolate wrappers
The global confectionary giant currently imports recycled plastics to meet its target for 30 per cent recycled packaging as Australia doesn’t have a facility.
- Ben Potter
June 2023
World-beating Australian recycling tech debuts in UK, Japan
Sydney-based Licella is poised to reveal partners for a proposed plant on the Dow Chemical site at Altona, in Melbourne’s west, in coming weeks.
- Updated
- Ben Potter
Plastic recycling push held back by lack of nationwide plan
A more determined approach including government action is needed to accelerate the transition to sustainable plastics, say IKEA and Arnott’s executives.
- Ben Potter
April 2023
Meet the fisherman’s daughter using seaweed to make plastic packaging
Kelpy has developed a process for turning almost any variety of seaweed into an alternative to single-use plastic packaging.
- Tess Bennett
February 2023
The globe has more single-use plastic waste than ever
The equivalent of almost 1 kilogram in single-use products was produced for every person on the planet in 2021, according to a report by Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation.
- Tom McIlroy
December 2022
What is worse for the environment: A real or fake Christmas tree?
Putting up the Christmas tree is a timeless tradition, but one option is better for the environment.
- Campbell Kwan
RSL’s $25m green play to make it less reliant on pokies
Campsie RSL will open a new manufacturing plant in Bathurst next year that converts wheat straw into compostable packaging.
- Tess Bennett
November 2022
Rock star and model among backers of seaweed ‘plastic’ start-up
A Perth start-up called Uluu has raised $8 million, as it tries to make a plastic replacement from seaweed, with famous faces joining VC investors in the round.
- Tess Bennett
Tech start-ups aim to reshape the economy through net zero
As world leaders converge on Egypt for the COP27 summit, a generation of Australian tech entrepreneurs is hopeful the green sentiment sticks and investments flow.
- Paul Smith
- Exclusive
- Venture capital
Plastic-eating enzyme start-up banks $54m to build its first facility
Samsara Eco has banked $54 million to build its first commercial 20,000 tonne facility in Melbourne, where early investor Woolworths has already signed up for 5000 tonnes of its polyester to be broken down.
- Jessica Sier
June 2022
- Podcast
- Tech Zero
Tech Zero episode 1: the science of the lambs
Joanne Howarth wants to fleece the polystyrene packaging industry. She plans to replace the squeaky packing material made from oil or methane with something more environment-friendly: wool.
- Peter Ker and Lap Phan
Labor urged to add polystyrene tax to plastics plan
A packaging disrupter has urged the Labor government to step up a plastic policy that will only this year ban the burger ‘clam shells’ axed by McDonalds in 1991.
- Peter Ker and Lap Phan
April 2022
Pact bolts on containers maker Synergy Plastics
Pact’s looking to buy an Australian packaging group owned by American plastics company Berry Global.
- Anthony Macdonald, Sarah Thompson and Kanika Sood
March 2022
The one household chore to help keep safe from microplastics
Regulators, scientists and industrial organisations are investigating the potential effect of microplastics on human health but are yet say if they cause harm.
- Jill Margo
- Exclusive
- Funding
Recycling start-up scores $6m for enzyme that eats plastic
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Woolworths’ venture capital fund W23 and CSIRO’s Main Sequence Ventures have invested in Samsara Eco’s latest round.
- Yolanda Redrup