In a panel discussion on the Australasian Recycling Label Program at the Australasian Waste & Recycling Expo (AWRE) this week, the APCO team chaired a panel of industry specialists who shared their knowledge and insights.
Nerida Kelton, AIP
Image: PKN
The session focused on ways to work with supply chains and stakeholders to help facilitate ARL uptake and drive the development of a true circular economy for sustainable packaging, and featured the upcoming Australasian Recycling Label (ARL) SME Program.
Developed alongside key industry associations the Australian Institute of Packaging, the Australian Food & Grocery Council, and the National Retail Association, the Program is designed to help smaller businesses fulfill their responsibility to tell their customers how to recycle correctly – and help push Australia towards achieving the 2025 National Packaging Targets.
APCO’s Lesley Fox began the discussion by providing a definition of the ARL, its aims and key elements, benefits to adopting it, and what consumers think about it, citing research that shows that 75 per cent of Australians agree the ARL is a great idea and want to see it on all packaging; 60 per cent look to businesses to provide recycling information, and more than 50 per cent of Australians are more likely to buy a product with the ARL on pack.
Fox also touched on the SME ARL Program campaign which is raising awareness among SMEs about the benefits of adopting the ARL on their packaging, while also providing support for them to improve the sustainability of their packaging and to adopt the ARL. She also went on to discuss what the program aims to do and the goals it has to meet the 2025 National Packaging Targets.
“The ARL on packaging is one of the simplest ways an SME can reduce their brand’s environmental impact,” said Fox, pointing out the importance of helping customers to recycle correctly to reduce the amount of packaging that goes to landfill or ends up as litter.
Fox then joined the panel discussion, chaired by APCO’s Sarah Sannen with other panellists Ebony Johnson, National Retail Association, and Nerida Kelton, AIP, which looked into the program and outlined how the process will be made easy for small businesses to drive uptake of the ARL
The discussion kicked off with each panellist sharing where their members sit in the packaging value chain and what they would gain from using the ARL, before the session was opened up to the audience for questions.
Responding to the question around what waste and recycling industry councils can do to help increase recovery rates, Johnson said, “I think from an industry perspective, we could share a little bit more with governments so they can make informed decisions. I believe we need to harmonise waste collection standards because we can't design for recyclability that varies per council area. The ARL relies on harmonised systems and one rule across Australia and it should be reliable to go in one bin. I would love to see more harmonisation between all levels of government councils working with State, State working with federal industry – we just need nice clear roadmaps.”
Fox added to that by saying, “We have toolkits and people out there who are ready to sit with these guys to help them through all this. These are resources that we can give to you to give to your to SMEs to educate their consumers because the consumers are asking for this. In terms of councils and your consumers and how to get them to recycle more effectively at home, the ARL is a great example of what you can do to communicate. I will also say that the waste industry is really keen to work with you more in terms of data and your industry so that we can make [packaging] more recyclable and educate brand owners as to what can and can't be recycled here in Australia.”
Johnson went on to emphasise the importance of having the ARL unpacked into a clean logo. “Even if it's the trash logo. We have a major problem first to deal with, that of contamination. We have to sort out the contamination soon, because otherwise all your products will be bad because it's all ending up contaminated. We need to play a part in educating consumers unless you want less choice. We all need to take responsibility for that. So even if currently it's not recyclable, get the ARL on it first and then it's not part of the problem and then work on the solution.”
Further questions raised by the audience centred around REDcycle, packaging assessments, what the waste and recycling councils can do to help reduce recovery rate, compostable packaging, and end of life.
Addressing the question related to the target of reusable compostable packaging, Kelton said, “Compostable packaging is suitable for packaging that is heavily contaminated with food or another organic nutrient, and which cannot be easily removed by the consumer and is therefore unsuitable for material recycling.
“Compostable Packaging also assists the recovery of waste organics. For example, food waste bags for Food and Garden Organics (FOGO) collections, or venues with a high proportion of food waste where all of the compostable packaging can be collected and processed together."
Kelton went on to outline some compostable packaging design questions to consider, such as:
- Is the consumer likely to have convenient access to a service that will collect and compost the packaging, such as FOGO?
- If not, can you work with others to establish a collection and composting service to ensure that the packaging is actually collected & composted?
- Are you providing consumers with information on how to correctly dispose of the packaging?”
Johnson added to this by asking,“How are we going to not confuse consumers? I think we've really got to decide as industries and as governments and altogether in the supply chain, which way are we going for different items. No one wants to sit there and figure out which cup goes in which bin. With this label and that label, they are already confused. We need to improve recycling rates, and think of this simply. We can get really smart with all kinds of fancy technology, but we also have to come back to Joe standing in his pyjamas at the bin making that decision. What's he going to do when he’s half in the dark? There are millions of people doing just that. We can all be very clever about compostable solutions but the question is truly where customers are going to put it? I think we need to make some decisions as an industry about where we know it should end up.”
Responding to the question on end of life for plastics, and the amount of times that they can be recycled properly, Kelton said, “I think the first thing is to adopt a wise The Waste hierarchy – start with avoid/reduce and reuse/repair and then a recycle focus on those first and looking at your lower your environmental impacts there first. And then focus on recyclability. I don't really have the answer to this question completely but I think we need to look at the hierarchy a little differently.”
The session wrapped up with Sannen directing attendees to www.arlmarketplace.org.au for further information on the program, and all things ARL
