Another secret REDcycle plastic stockpile uncovered after company goes bust

A huge secret stockpile of soft plastic has been uncovered – another in dozens nationwide abandoned by a major recycling scheme.

Images of a massive secret stockpile of soft plastics collected for recycling have been revealed in northwest Sydney, exposing the grim extent of the failed REDcycle scheme.

Footage from Nine News shows hundreds of bales of bundled soft plastics stacked at a facility in Marsden Park – one of 15 similar sites across NSW.

A massive stockpile of plastics has been found at a facility in Marsden Park, northwest Sydney. Picture: Nine News.

The stacks of plastic were collected by Aussie households for recycling. Picture: Nine News

The plastics were intended to be recycled through a national scheme led by Melbourne-based company REDcycle, founded in 2011.

Australians were encouraged to drop off their soft plastic waste at bins in nearly 2000 Coles or Woolworths supermarkets across the country to be given new life.

But the scheme was suspended in November 2022 after an investigation revealed REDcycle stopped recycling and was instead secretly hoarding tonnes of donated plastic in warehouses for months.

At the time, REDcycle said it was “committed” to getting the program “back up and running as soon as possible”. But, the company has since been declared insolvent, owing $5 million to creditors after failing to pay storage fees on its secret stashes.

About 11,000 tonnes of soft plastics were stockpiled by REDcycle. Picture: Nine News

It is unclear how much plastic was stored at this facility. Picture: Nine News

Woolworths and Coles have taken responsibility for the estimated 11,000 tonnes of collected waste held at 32 secret sites across Victoria, NSW and South Australia. But even more rubbish has been found in 14 new locations – including several for the first time in Tasmania, Queensland and Western Australia.

“To date, we have identified a total of 44 sites where REDcycle had been stockpiling soft plastics without our knowledge,” a spokeswoman for Coles and Woolworths told the Sydney Morning Herald.

As of March 2023, Coles and Woolworths’ state-based environment regulators told the newspaper the companies had recorded 19 sites in NSW, 15 in Victoria, six in South Australia, two in Tasmania, and one each in Queensland and Western Australia.

Soft plastics were collected at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets to be taken by REDcycle for recycling. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Ian Currie

The NSW Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told news.com.au the uncovered Marsden Park site was included in a final Clean-Up Notice issued to Coles and Woolworths in March this year.

In a statement, the EPA said the supermarkets were required to address the “potential fire and pollution risk posed by the stockpiling of 5200 tonnes of soft plastic” at 15 sites across the state.

The supermarkets have 10 weeks to remove the stockpiles, and they will have a further 12 months to develop long-term “lawful” solutions for the materials – “whether that’s recycling, exporting for recycling overseas or, as a last resort, sending it to landfill”.

Woolworths has since announced it will phase out its 15c plastic shopping bags from stores. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Swift

Images of the Marsden Park site came to light the day after Woolworths announced it would phase out its 15 cent reusable plastic shopping bags in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.

The move makes Woolworths the first major supermarket in Australia to offer no kind of plastic bags in stores, after a ban on single-use plastic bags was first introduced by legislation in 2018.

It is an achievement Woolworths’ director of stores Jeanette Fenske said the supermarket was “proud” to make and was “an important step towards more sustainable grocery shopping across the country”.

“Bringing your own bags is the very best outcome for the environment, and we encourage our customers to keep up the great work,” she said in a statement.

“Paper bags will continue to be available for those who forget to bring their own – but ultimately, we want to sell less bags altogether.”

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