Planet Ark was unable to stay afloat in a harsh environment

Planet Ark, known for environmental campaigns and programs including National Tree Day and National Recycling Week, has been unable to sustain itself.

Regrettably, the organisation’s collapse has raised questions about the shelf-life of the not-for-profit sector confronting Australia’s waste crisis, while government is being increasingly pressured to regulate packaging.

A Planet Ark worker stands by a mountain of recycled waste.Credit: Jennifer Soo

The board of Planet Ark Environmental Foundation took the decision to go into voluntary administration following a review of its finances and future viability. The impact of COVID-19 on stakeholder support, current economic climate and ongoing funding challenges gathered to adversely affect the organisation.

Nevertheless, the ground has moved since Planet Ark started in 1992. It has shifted from a largely campaigning and educational role – promoting circular economy principles and encouraging better recycling behaviour – into partnering with corporations and organisations on packaging sustainability. And not without criticism: one of its founders, Jon Dee, severed ties in 2012 over its new directions, including links with the timber industry.

Some of Planet Ark’s work and campaigns have been ground-breaking. After battles in Australia between conservationists, vested interests and governments over wilderness and rainforests in the 1970s and 1980s, a grudging recognition of climate change and new attitudes to environmentalism saw a number of organisations established in the 1990s that promoted sustainability and community involvement.

Meanwhile, waste developed into an existential issue as consumer societies boomed, and a throwaway culture spread rapidly across the world. Households and governments were left to shoulder the burden of recycling. When not-for-profit organisations like Planet Ark stepped into the breach, their work was not only practical but instrumental in raising new awareness.

It is now widely recognised that climate change, sustainability and recycling are not only interlinked, but everybody’s problem. The Herald’s environment and climate editor Nick O’Malley today writes on politicians across the world turning away from bold climate action, while noting Canada’s new Prime Minister Mark Carney was widely known for a 2015 speech to London financial institutions warning that climate change presented a real and overwhelming economic tragedy: “Though its impacts would be most devastating to future generations, it could only be addressed by our own. This was the tragedy.”

The work of the not-for-profit sector has been blunted by corporations driven by profit. The companies bore little responsibility for the fate of their products after they had been used by consumers, and governments have been loath to introduce more stringent controls. That may change – in Australia the industry has come around to the idea of a mandatory scheme and the federal government has been consulting on the issue and plans to consider a preferred model for reformed packaging regulation.

Planet Ark hopes to come good again, but the take-home from its decision to go into voluntary administration is that recycling is so important it can no longer be left to industry or to charity. We can no longer accept that a Coke bottle used for 10 minutes will then become a problem for humanity to deal with for the next 10,000 years.

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