Mungalli Creek Dairy: Plastic is Wasted petition to incentivise recycling
Mungalli Creek Dairy is petitioning for recycled plastic to be incentivised in a bid to save plastic from going to landfill.
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OWNERS of a much-loved Tablelands business have petitioned the state government to incentivise the use of recycled plastic in a bid to provide sustainable packaging and divert plastics from landfill.
The daughter of Mungalli Creek Dairy owners Rob and Danny Watson and petition organiser Beth Watson said there was a lack of sustainable packaging options for businesses, with “return and refill” bottles and compostable packaging not being suitable in a lot of cases.
“So then I thought, what about recycled plastic … but there just wasn’t any out there, it just wasn’t viable.
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“Then we found out that 84 per cent of plastic is buried in landfill – it’s crazy that we have a demand for recycled plastic yet there’s not enough but we’re burying all this (virgin) plastic.”
Ms Watson said they were calling on the government to offer rebates to businesses that chose recycled plastic that was processed locally from 50 per cent locally sourced plastic.
“Recycling doesn’t work if you don’t have a recycled plastic market. No one’s going to go to the effort of collecting that plastic, washing it, putting it through quality assurance, if there’s nobody buying the end product,” she said. “But once you do all that stuff to plastic, it makes it a more expensive product, so there’s no incentive to choose it.”
President of the Committee for Waste Reduction, Lesley Van Staveren, agreed policy was needed as it was currently too hard and costly for people to stop plastic from being wasted.
“When you look at the material itself and keep it high quality, it can be valued as a commodity for businesses further on down the line for manufacturing into something else.”
Ms Van Staveren said the solution was not as easy as simply recycling something because it was plastic, but that policy and messaging were key developments needed to drive the recycling movement forward.
“You have to have all levels working together and that means private sectors, industries, the recycling sector itself, the plastic sector, right through to government.”
The petition can be viewed on the Mungalli Creek Dairy website.
Originally published as Mungalli Creek Dairy: Plastic is Wasted petition to incentivise recycling
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