Supermarkets to take thousands of tonnes of soft plastic from REDcycle

Woolworths and Coles have joined forces to help with a failed program aimed at lowering a threat to the environment and human health.

Woolworths and Coles will take on responsibility for more than 12,000 tonnes of stockpiled soft plastic that is potentially a threat to the environment and human health.

The major supermarkets offered to take control of the plastics from failed recycling program REDcycle last week to “provide safe storage of the material while recycling solutions are explored”.

The now insolvent organisation accepted the offer on Sunday.

“We’re pleased this agreement will provide greater certainty that REDcycle’s stockpiles will be responsibly managed for the best possible environmental outcome,” a Coles and Woolworths a spokesperson said in a joint statement.

The REDcycle program was stockpiling plastics in warehouses across the country. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

The thousands of tonnes of plastic are kept in 32 stockpiles across NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

With a “limited” soft plastic recycling capacity in Australia and the potential that some material will no longer be suitable for recycling, it’s possible parts of the stockpile could go to landfill.

“To date, the supermarkets have not been given access to the stockpiled material. They will need to assess whether any of the soft plastic has degraded to an extent where it is no longer suitable for reprocessing,” a spokesperson for both companies said last week.

“Coles and Woolworths will work to recycle as much of the material they are given as possible.”

The offer does not include a monetary offer for the plastics and is not an attempt to purchase the failed program by Woolworths or Coles.

The pair of retail giants will move to take control of the mountains of plastic after the company winds up on Monday as ordered by the NSW Supreme Court.

Woolworths Group chief executive Brad Banducci said Australians had been let down by the failed REDcycle scheme. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

Teams from Coles and Woolworths will work with REDcycle employees and a court appointed administrator on a stockpile remediation and management plan.

“We will be commencing work this week to address the current stockpile storage issues and conducting inspections of the REDcycle material over the coming weeks,” the supermarkets’ spokesperson said on Monday.

REDcycle’s parent company RG Programs and Services was declared insolvent on Monday after it failed to pay storage fees on the thousands of tonnes of plastic.

Benjamin Carson of Farnsworth Carson has been appointed as liquidator to take control of the business, with creditors to have to fight for what they are owed by the company, including one that said they weren’t paid to store the plastic.

Coles and Woolworth say they paid $20 million to the company over a decade as partners in the scheme.

The company’s collapse will not prevent Coles and Woolworths from enacting their rescue plan for the plastic.

Both supermarkets will contribute to a “multimillion-dollar” fund to store and manage the stockpiled material.

Millions of pieces of soft plastic have gone to landfill after the company stopped collecting the rubbish from Coles and Woolworths supermarkets. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

“The fund is intended to address the existing REDcycle stockpiles while industry and government continue to work on long-term future soft plastics waste solutions,” the spokesperson said.

Woolworths Group chief executive Brad Banducci said Australians had been let down by the failed REDcycle scheme.

“We were very disappointed to learn that REDcycle hasn’t been recycling the soft plastics they collected from our stores and we are working to make it right,” he said.

“Coles and Woolworths have taken this step to provide reassurance to the public that the soft plastics they took the effort to deposit in REDcycle’s bins won’t be unnecessarily sent to landfill.”

Coles chief operations and sustainability officer Matt Swindells said the major retailers had paid $20m to REDcycle over the past decade, with the program collecting about 150 million plastic items from nearly 2000 supermarkets across the country each month.

The program was suspended in November, with hundreds of millions of plastic bags then sent to landfill in the wake of its collapse.