Labor commits to national packaging rules, as Planet Ark collapses

Planet Ark has gone into voluntary administration, in the latest collapse of one of the institutions meant to be managing Australia’s national recycling strategy even as the government struggles to meet its targets to divert rubbish from landfill.

The environmental charity behind the Australasian recycling label, National Recycling Week and several voluntary industry recycling schemes, appointed administrators this week. It comes about three years after the high-profile collapse of soft-plastics recycling scheme REDcycle.

Planet Ark championed the Australasian Recycling Label.Credit: Planet Ark

A statement from the board of Planet Ark Environmental Foundation on Thursday blamed the organisation’s financial woes on “the impact of COVID-19 on stakeholder support, current economic climate and ongoing funding challenges”.

Michael Jones and Bruce Gleeson from Jones Partners Insolvency & Restructuring have been appointed with a mandate to restructure the organisation if possible.

“Voluntary administration provides an opportunity for an independent assessment of the organisation’s affairs and to explore potential options for restructuring that will allow the organisation to continue our important work,” the Planet Ark statement said.

Planet Ark’s business model relied heavily on gaining corporate partnerships supplemented by government grants to set up voluntary industry recycling schemes, but Australia is now moving towards a mandatory scheme.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said on Friday a re-elected Albanese Labor government would introduce rules to produce less waste in the first place, in line with an approach agreed by state and federal environment ministers last June.

“The rules will include mandatory packaging design standards and targets – including for recycled content and to address the use of harmful chemicals in food packaging,” Plibersek said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek on the campaign trail.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Nationally, Australia has committed to 70 per cent of plastic packaging being recycled by next year. The most recent figures suggest we are less than halfway there.

The packaging and consumer goods industry has abandoned its long-held antipathy to government regulation, and has been calling for a mandatory scheme to ensure national consistency and that the costs are fairly shared. In February, the federal Environment Department published the results of a government consultation that showed a clear majority of respondents supported Commonwealth regulation of packaging.

In August last year, co-regulator APCO announced plans to slug businesses hundreds of millions of dollars by 2027 to reduce packaging.

Planet Ark’s financial statements to the charity regulator are more than a year overdue. The 2022 report, the most recent available, listed revenue of $3.08 million and expenses of $3.79 million. Goods and services, such as corporate sponsorships, partnerships and consulting accounted for more than 85 per cent of income.

Planet Ark co-founder Jon Dee in 2024.Credit: Glenn Hunt

The organisation is involved in a number of voluntary product stewardship schemes, including Batteries 4 Planet Ark, Cartridges 4 Planet Ark and Mobile Muster. It was awarded $940,000 from the National Product Stewardship Investment Fund under the former Coalition government to set up PODcycle to recycle aluminium and plastic coffee pods, but so far it has a pilot program in only five retailers and two cafes in NSW and Victoria.

Recycling industry insiders, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said many corporations were delaying investing in new schemes while awaiting details from the federal government and APCO.

Jeff Angel, director of the Boomerang Alliance, said Planet Ark was too close to industry.

“What they did by creating those schemes, and they would get money from industry for that … is they would give credibility or legitimacy to those weak schemes,” Angel said.

“Voluntary schemes always fail to make a significant impact, so it was on the verge of greenwashing because industry used it to oppose much stronger regulatory schemes.”

Angel said the emerging support for regulation in the packaging industry was a shift in approach, given it took 13 years of advocacy to get container deposit schemes up and running.

When asked what gap it would leave if Planet Ark closed its doors, Angel said: “Not much.”

However, Louise Hyland, chief executive of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, said Planet Ark was a “leading environmental organisation” that had helped educate Australians and promote recycling, and she hoped the restructure would allow it to survive. A partnership meant that Planet Ark promoted Mobile Muster, but the program was run independently and would continue regardless, she said.

Jon Dee, a co-founder of Planet Ark who was part of the organisation from 1992 to 2007, severed ties in 2012 over the organisation’s partnership with the timber industry.

He said he had spoken to administrators and set up a meeting for next week to understand the financial problems and whether he could be involved in restructuring.

“How do we bring Planet Ark back to what it used to be ... it really drove the agenda on a whole range of environmental topics and created real change,” Dee said.

Dee agreed it needed to be mandatory for manufacturers to fund recycling.

“We’re not getting results that warrant a continuation of the voluntary approach,” he said. “It’s not working.”

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