By Mike Foley
Producers and importers face tougher regulations unless they step up to deliver on Australia’s recycling and reuse targets, as federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek fires a warning shot at “cowboys” bucking the good work of others in the industry.
Plibersek’s warning follows the revelations the Woolworths and Coles soft-plastic recycling program, REDcycle, has collapsed, leaving thousands of tonnes collected from customers sitting in stockpiles.
She said while some companies were making great strides and investing millions of dollars to be sustainable, Australia’s lack of progress on its recycling targets was a “real problem” that the federal government was committed to turning around.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen.
“Some producers of goods are doing really well, but others are just cowboys,” Plibersek said.
She stressed that the government was committed to working with industry and it was her preference not to crack down with tougher regulations.
“This is not something that government should be or needs to be doing alone, we actually want to work with the sectors that are creating waste to reduce that waste,” Plibersek said.
“In the first instance, we always try and facilitate change.
“We’ve got a target of 70 per cent of plastic being diverted from landfill by 2025 and we’re at 16 per cent and we’ve been stuck at 16 per cent for four years now. That is a real problem.”
The former Coalition government set ambitious recycling targets but progress has been slow. It announced in 2019 that Australia would restrict waste exports to reduce the 4.5 million tonnes it shipped offshore each year, following import bans in China, India, Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand.
Plibersek said she was forced last week to declare that tyres, mattresses and healthcare products had been placed on the minister’s priority stewardship list, which signals that unless the industry improves, the next “third and final option” is for government to impose mandatory rules.
Half of all tyre importers don’t contribute funds to the industry’s voluntary product stewardship scheme to recycle and reuse, while 22,000 tonnes a year of mattresses are still piling up in landfill.
“It’s really only as a last resort that we say you’ve had ... multiple chances, you can’t keep dumping this stuff in landfill, we’re prepared to regulate,” Plibersek said.
Operating in about 200 supermarkets, REDcycle ground to a halt about five months ago when a fire at a Melbourne facility halted the processing of plastic bags and other items, which led to the company amassing a stockpile of hundreds of millions of bags and other soft plastic items, instead of recycling it.
WWF-Australia plastics policy manager Kate Noble said Australia’s voluntary recycling targets should be legislated “because no one’s accountable for achieving them”.
Last month, state and federal ministers agreed to new targets for 2025, including making packaging 100 per cent reusable, recyclable or compostable, 75 per cent of plastic packaging being recycled or composted, 50 per cent of recycled content included in packaging and phasing out unnecessary single-use plastics.
“The voluntary arrangements that we have are really not working. And kind of what we’ve seen over the past week has underlined what we already knew,” Noble said.
She said polling conducted for WWF showed strong support for stronger regulations, with 86 per cent of Australians supporting reforms to make manufacturers and retailers responsible for reducing and recycling plastic packaging and 77 per cent backing an immediate ban on single-use plastics.
Noble said Australia should follow the European Union’s moves to reduce waste and boost recycling.
It has new rules to force companies to use plastics easier to recycle and boost the amount of recycled material used in production of goods. It is also developing laws under its Circular Economy plan that would regulate the types of products that can be sold, so goods can be repaired or reused, rather than thrown away if they break.
Noble said recycling and waste reduction were popular with the public because it could deliver economic outcomes.
“It can stimulate innovation like with Airbnb and other businesses that have come from the sharing economy – there’s a lot of cash to be made in that space.”
Plibersek said the federal government would invest in research and development to boost Australia’s circular economy.
“For every job you create, if you’re dumping stuff in the tip, you create three jobs if you’re recycling,” she said.
“We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the engineers, we’ve got the technicians, we’ve got the materials – we’ve got people who know how to keep these precious resources in circulation.”
Get to the heart of what’s happening with climate change and the environment. Our fortnightly Environment newsletter brings you the news, the issues and the solutions. Sign up here.