Aussies who have been taking the time to drop their soft plastics off at Coles and Woolworths recycling points have been left bitterly disappointed after it was revealed the rubbish was not being recycled at all.
You can read the full article here
Soft Plastic Recycling Scheme Available at Coles, Woolies Collapses
BewareOfThe Dog on 09/11/2022 - 09:50
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I read this yesterday the non Aussies are upset that it’s not being recycled story version.
A fire 5 months ago at one of the major companies accepting the soft plastics had a fire and won’t be back online till June next year. That article said until that point the demand/supply was at equilibrium.
“Close the Loop chief executive Joe Foster said the company’s processing equipment would be back online in mid-2023.
“We got to the stage where supply was less than demand. [Before the fire] demand was just going crazy. We are committed to working with REDcycle, we’re just in the rebuilding phase,” he said.
REDcycle had already lost Plastic Forests, another small-scale recycling partner that made garden planting kits, in February 2021. Last week, outdoor furniture and decking-maker Replas stopped accepting plastics because it had an oversupply and was planning to phase out processing the material.”
Yeah apparently one of the issues with setting up a soft plastic recycling plant here is not a big enough supply of waste plastic. The person I spoke to basically said that this is just a clickbait article and that it wasn't much of a secret that soft plastics are currently being stockpiled.
It's good to get the clarity of ideas and thought out of the way before the invasion of the "HAHAHA GRETA THUNBURG CRYING WOKE TEARS ITS ALL FAKE RECYCLING IS A SCAM SHEEPLE" everything-is-politics crowd locks on to it, though.
No doubt Mark Latham will have a blistering hot take about how 'the left' were lying to us all along and Greenpeace is a trans splinter-cell etc
that it wasn't much of a secret that soft plastics are currently being stockpiled.
Coles and Woolies were not aware?
the plant will be able to recycle it all in 2 months.
then what? 5 years worth all done in 2 months? Doesn't seem worthwhile to build such a huge centre. Would be good if there was a news article about it.
Was this always the plan?
Redcycle wouldn't be the only source I assume
Agree, but they are probably one of the larger ones. One years worth from both Coles and Woolies done in around 2 weeks? Must be some super recycling factory.
@ozhunter: I'm sure they've crunched the numbers. The people setting this up are primarily concerned with revenue, it's not an exercise in corporate wokeness.
Reminds me of a story that was in the ABC series “War on Waste” where they put a GPS tracker into a recycling bin and saw the rubbish was taken to a tip lol.
I mean is anyone really at all surprised by this news? Things do not work the way you think they work when you’re in high school or uni, there is a lot of corruption in this world.
Hopefully with the new introduction of the Victorian container deposit scheme that those plastics actually get recycled. I’m guessing though that recycling plastic costs more than it does to make new plastic, so it’s not worth it.
Don't need a GPS tracker. I have a dashcam video of one council truck collecting garbage, recycling and green waste at the same time.
I think that is newsworthy, as we expect our councils (& their sub contactors) to be doing the right thing.
I remember watching this, and providing it was the same episode, the plastics were going to the right place, but being stockpiled.
The was also a separate documentary (i think 4 Corners), where massive warehouses were getting stockpiled with bottles (and I think that same documentary was exposing corruption in waste management).
I was listening to ABC radio and it seems as though the issue was too much plastic and not enough processing capacity. Not exactly the same thing, my bad, but yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s still corruption in the industry.
Stupid humans :(
Sooo, the article doesn't quite tell the whole story.
Basically the system was set up and didn't scale particularly well. It was overwhelmed with the large amount and they couldn't process it fast enough.
I think they were ahead of supply and didn't predict it well.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. We need to do reduce our usage more. Recycling is the third option to limit your environmental impact and recycling options are lessening quickly as the cost to recycle increases.
100%. Governments need to do more to stop companies creating too much waste. Companies need to create less waste. Retailers need to allow customers to BYO more often.
Consumers need to reduce the amount of waste they have, for sure, but it’s not their fault most things come in plastic. We can’t blame them without all the other parts above making changes.
Agreed. It’s harder and more costly to shop plastic-free. It was also a large effort to recycle the soft plastics and now they are disposing of them all. It makes people less motivated about caring.
Yeah I'm not surprised, this sort of thing seems to be very common. At least in this case it was just soft plastics being stored in a warehouse and not hundreds of drums of chemical waste like the warehouse in West Footscray that went up in flames and sent toxic fumes across the surrounding area.
Update: mentioned this to someone I know in the plastics industry and apparently there is a soft plastics recycling centre in Australia coming online in 2025 so potentially they were stockpiling until then. The plant will be able to recycle 60k tonnes per year so if this group has been stockpiling for the last two years and continue at the same rate for another 3 years, the plant will be able to recycle it all in 2 months.