Soft Plastics Recycling Sees Growth, But Needs More Consumer Participation

By Keira Proust

Topic: Recycling and Waste Management

Fri 19 Jun 2026 at 8:13am

Soft plastics recyclers need more customers to drop off materials at collection points.

In short:

Australia's soft plastics recycling industry is operating at nearly triple its capacity during the peak of the REDcycle scheme.

All waste left behind when the REDcycle scheme collapsed in 2022 has now been processed.

What's next?

The Greens have introduced a bill to create a mandatory responsibility scheme for plastic packaging producers.

Four years after REDcycle collapsed, soft plastics recyclers have finally processed all the legacy waste left behind.

REDcycle had plastic waste collection bins at most major supermarkets but shut down in 2022.

Stockpiles of plastics were later found in warehouses, and the company was placed into liquidation, owing creditors about $5 million.

A new national recycling scheme has resumed soft plastic collections, but the sector faces new hurdles.

Soft Plastics Stewardship Australia oversees the rollout of the scheme, which is now at nearly three times the operating capacity reached during REDcycle's peak.

REDcycle's collapse left behind huge stockpiles of plastic around the country.

Co-CEO Barry Cosier said the industry now needs to get more customers back on board.

Our biggest constraint is collecting enough material for all these facilities.

So, we now have the opposite issue of REDcycle.

There are over 700 soft plastics collection points set up in supermarkets across New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, the ACT, and Queensland.

According to SPSA, that provides recycling access to almost 70 per cent of Australians.

SPSA is working with 10 councils to trial soft plastics collections in kerbside bins, servicing about 150,000 homes.

Barry Cosier says the scheme needs more consumer buy-in to work.

Recyclers say there is still a lot of work to do to regain consumer trust and convince them that this model will not suffer the same fate as REDcycle.

Mr Cosier said they had worked hard to ensure the systems were sustainable by diversifying the market with a lot greater technology.

During REDcycle's era, processors mostly used compression moulding to turn materials into items like boards or bollards.

Now, improved technology can turn household soft plastics into pellets and flakes, which can then be used to create a wider variety of new plastic products.

Containers for soft plastics recycling have returned to hundreds of stores around Australia.

Recycling capacity nearly triples

At its peak, REDcycle processed up to 8,000 tonnes of soft plastic waste a year.

SPSA currently works with four recycling partners across Australia, which can process more than 20,000 tonnes annually.

The scheme's largest recycling facility, based on the NSW Mid North Coast, is recycling 14,000 tonnes alone.

They're currently doing some upgrades that will get them to 24,000 tonnes.

The iQRenew recycling facility, near Taree, will soon be able to process up to 24,000 tonnes of soft plastic annually.

On Melbourne's outskirts, a plastic chemical recycling plant is being commissioned that will be able to process up to an additional 5,000 tonnes a year.

While the nation's recycling capacity grows, our plastic consumption is also increasing.

In the government's latest reporting period of 2023–2024, Australians consumed 4 million tonnes of plastic and packaging.

That was an additional 100,000 tonnes on the year prior.

The national plastics recovery rate remained at 14 per cent.

While recycling is one part of the solution to reducing Australia's waste footprint, RMIT sustainable development expert Usha Iyer-Raniga said it was time to consider systemic changes that would reduce the waste itself.

You can't just rely on recycling.

The RMIT professor, who also co-leads the Circular Built Environment for the Global Alliance, said you could not tackle the issue of plastic waste alone.

[We need to] think about doing something similar with our food waste or clothing and textile waste.

The federal government is aiming to double its circular economy's capacity by 2035.

This would all feed into the nation's circular economy, which the federal government has committed to doubling the capacity of by 2035.

Building consumer awareness

Another barrier to collecting enough materials for the processing facilities is the lack of awareness in the general community about the return of soft plastics recycling.

SPSA said it had plans to launch a clearer brand and more visible signage for soft plastic collection points, but that consumer awareness had always been low.

REDcycle itself, after 10 years and with a national footprint, was only collecting about 2 per cent of what was put on market.

More than 80 per cent of people surveyed by SPSA said they wanted to recycle their soft plastics.

A recent SPSA survey showed 81 per cent of the community wanted to recycle their soft plastics, with kerbside collections the preference.

Dr Iyer-Raniga said many people were unaware of the health risks of improper plastic waste disposal, and believed advertisements about the harms of microplastics would have a strong impact.

I remember those [smoking and drink driving] ads from years ago … they were all pretty powerful in terms of getting a very clear message across.

Imagine if we had ads that say, 'If you don't dispose of your household rubbish appropriately, you could actually end up having microplastics in your system.'

Public awareness about soft plastics recycling is still very low.

Bill introduced to federal Senate

While the industry waits for more consumers to get on board with soft plastics recycling, there is movement in Canberra's Parliament House to introduce a long called for mandatory Extended Producer Responsibility scheme for packaging.

The scheme would make packaging producers responsible for the entire life cycle of their products, including the clean-up of plastic pollution at the end of life.

Countries around the world have already implemented variations of this scheme, including Canada, Japan and South Korea, along with the European Union.

Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson introduced a bill to tackle the issue in May, and said it was time for the government to act.

It's been extremely frustrating because we've been talking about packaging reform now in Australia for decades.

Every year that we wait and delay, more damage is done to the environment and to human health, so there's no time to waste, if you pardon the pun.

Peter Whish-Wilson has introduced a bill to legislate a mandatory packaging scheme for producers.

The Greens put forward amendments to the Coalition government's waste and recycling bill in 2020 in an attempt to address this issue, but they were defeated.

Senator Whish-Wilson is hopeful all political parties will get on board this time around.

I'm optimistic it's going to happen because in all the time I've been campaigning on this for over 20 years, I've never seen all the stars align like they are now.

Federal environment minister Murray Watt did not respond to questions about whether the government would support the Greens's bill, but said they were committed to building a stronger domestic market for recovered materials, including soft plastics.

We're also committed to bolstering Australia's sovereign packaging manufacturing and domestic recycling capability by creating new, stable markets for domestically recycled products, and making industry responsible for the packaging it puts on our shelves and in our warehouses.

Mr Watt said the government was investing more than $200 million in new and upgraded infrastructure and contributing towards $1 billion of investment with states, territories and industry.

More than half of these projects support solutions for plastics, including plastics that are hard to recycle.

Fri 19 Jun 2026 at 8:13am

Promotion

Luyện nghe

Luyện nghe