The cost of plastic: Sydney conference to address waste issues

A conference which discusses the best ways to recover and recycle plastic packaging will be held in Sydney next month.

The SPE Annual Plastics & Waste Conference, now in its fifth year, will be held on 1 December at Sydney Olympic Park.

It will include presentations on policy, strategy and technology developments in regards to renewable resources and share several recycling success stories.

“Packaging professionals will benefit from gaining more knowledge about trends in packaging recovery and recycling, which are affecting their daily work as a result of new government actions, new technology and new solutions and applications,” said SPE's Han Michel, who added that speakers will address issues of 'the circular economy' and container deposit legislation.

“The world must evolve to a circular economy to make better use of the scarce resources which are placed under pressure by the fast growth in population.

“More could be done by the packaging industry in the area of establishing practices which follow the approach of 'design with resource recovery in mind'.

“In regard to the production of polymers, we need to keep in mind that about 35 per cent of these materials, globally, are being used by the packaging industry.”