A total ban on plastic bags has been in place in Australia since 1 September.
In order to meet the 2025 target of 70% of plastic packaging being recycled or composted, the Australian government has announced a A$15.6 million (€9.5 million) investment plan across three plastics recycling projects, which is expected to help divert 43,000 tonnes of plastics from landfill each year.
Investment in three soft plastics recycling projects
Packaging company Pro-Pac Group has secured an investment of more than A$6 million to expand its existing facility to convert recycled raw materials into flexible plastics with recycled content. The project will produce up to 11,000 tons per year of flexible plastic packaging containing 30% recycled content. The project will directly support 14 jobs.
Recycler Naula will earn more than A$5 million per year from the advanced sorting and processing of up to 32,000 tons of flexible and mixed plastic products for high quality applications such as food contact packaging. This will help Australia develop an advanced recycling supply chain to convert post-consumer soft plastic waste into food and other packaging. The project will directly support 61 jobs.
Sustainable Plastic Solutions has been awarded more than A$4 million to install recycling technology that will process an additional 800,000 tons of agricultural plastics such as film, grain tarpaulins and baling twine into high-quality resins each year for the same purpose. The project will directly support 25 jobs.
Australia bans plastic bags completely
The Australian government set up the fund after the failure of its 2022 soft plastics recycling program. Since 2010, the industry giant has invested millions of dollars in “recycling” to collect recyclable materials.In November 2022, it was revealed that the company was stockpiling soft plastics in multiple warehouses across Australia instead of recycling them. The failure of the program was partly blamed on a lack of soft plastic recycling infrastructure.
Australia launched an industry-led National Packaging Targets program in 2018, which does not penalize failure but requires 70% of plastic packaging to be recycled or composted by 2025. Australia will not meet this target, with only 18% of plastic packaging recycled by 2023.
Since September 1, a total ban on plastic bags has been in effect in all Australian states and territories. Some groups have called for the introduction of a plastics tax and an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) program in response.
