Huge recycling company accused of dumping plastic in landfill

Coles and Woolworths have announced they will suspend soft plastics collections from stores until further notice.

Coles and Woolworths have announced they will suspend soft plastics collections from stores until further notice.

Australia's only soft plastic recycler has been accused of dumping hundreds of tonnes of plastic in landfill despite ensuring customers it would keep waste out of the tip, the beaches, and waterways.

Recycling company REDcycle allegedly directed a Newcastle waste management facility to transport plastic items from a warehouse to the tip in March 2021, according to a logistics company they worked with, The Australian revealed on Monday.

Gollans Logistics says half of the 528 tonnes (about 174 shipping containers) of plastic they housed since 2019 went to a Newcastle garbage dump and the rest was redistributed to be secretly stored in warehouses across the country.

REDcycle claimed they collected up to five million soft plastic items (such as plastic bags, frozen food packaging, and bubble wrap) a day from more than 2000 Coles and Woolworths supermarkets. 

"If these allegations are correct, they would seem to raise matters that the ACCC, ASIC [federal consumer watchdogs] and other agencies may wish to investigate," Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek told The Australian.

Customers had no idea

Earlier this month, reports emerged that REDcycle had stockpiled millions of soft plastic items in warehouses instead of recycling them.

They did not tell customers, who continued to drop off the plastic items at local Coles and Woolworths supermarkets believing they were being recycled.

Following the revelations, REDcycle defended the decision to store items in warehouses when necessary. They assured customers the materials would only be stored in the short term to be processed later, and that no stockpile of plastics had been sent to landfill.

REDcycle has since "temporarily" shut down the collection program after two recycling partners (who process the soft plastics made into new recycled materials) shut down "due to several unforeseen challenges exacerbated by the pandemic".

"(It) has put untenable pressure on the REDcycle business model," a statement read.

Then, Coles and Woolworths announced that they would suspend soft plastics collections from stores until further notice.

The difficulties with soft plastic recycling

Industry experts have said the collapse of REDcycle is a symptom of an unviable and unregulated industry.

There is not enough demand for the products that are created out of recycled soft plastics, such as asphalt and street furniture, and the recycled materials aren't going back into creating soft plastic packaging, UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures Research Director Nick Florin said.

Also, some plastics and polymers, such as the PVC often found in labels, can contaminate the whole chemical recycling stream. Those polymers need to be reduced or separated from the rest, which takes time and money.

Associate Professor Florin said REDcycle, who was collecting a small portion of all soft plastics, may have made some questionable decisions around transparency but it isn't the whole problem.

"Ultimately we are buying products and putting big volumes of soft plastics into the market and there is no solution to collect it all and no one is demanding the recycled content goes into new products," he said.

The solution?

Associate Professor Florin said first, there needed to be better ways to collect soft plastics, which you cannot put into your yellow bins.

The problematic ingredients that make up soft plastic packaging like PVC labels also need to be banned or regulated, he said.

Third, the brands that make or use soft plastic packaging needed to commit to using recycled products so that the demand is there.

New paper packaging for popular confectionary

Mars, Snickers, and Milky Ways be packaged in recyclable paper, which can be recycled in kerbside bins at home.

Mars Wrigley Australia announced on Monday the new packaging would be on shelves from April 2023 as the company looks to remove 360 tonnes of plastic from its manufacturing chain.

New paper packaging.

Australia's pledge to end plastic pollution

The federal government has committed to recycling or reusing 100% of plastic waste by 2040, as part of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution alongside countries like Norway, UK, Germany, France, and Canada.

State and territory environment ministers have agreed to reform the regulation of plastic packaging by 2025.

Environment minister Tanya Plibersek said, "It’s going to be tough".

"The previous government set a target of 70% of plastics being reused, recycled, or diverted from landfill by 2025 and we’ve been stuck at 16% for four years so it gives you an idea of the scale of the challenge we are chasing."