More than 43,000 tonnes of soft plastics will be diverted from Victorian landfills every year, thanks to a $15.6 million investment in advanced and innovative recycling technology by the federal and state governments.
Three projects, delivered in partnership with the Victorian Government, have been announced under the new Recycling Modernisation Fund Plastics Technology stream, as governments work together on solutions for hard to recycle plastics, including soft plastics.
Pro-Pac Group in Reservoir received more than $6 million to expand its existing facility for transforming recycled feedstock into soft plastic with recycled content. It will produce up to 11,000 tonnes of Australian soft plastic packaging each year with 30 per cent recycled content. The project will deliver 14 direct jobs.
Naula in Altona received more than $5 million for advanced sorting and processing of up to 32,000 tonnes of soft and mixed plastics products per year, to refine them to produce new plastics such as food-grade packaging. This will help Australia to develop an advanced recycling supply chain that will turn post-consumer soft plastic waste back into food and other packaging. The project will deliver 61 direct jobs.
Sustainable Plastic Solutions received more than $4 million to install recycling technology to process an additional 8000 tonnes per year of agricultural plastics such as films, grain tarp and baling twine into high quality resins for remanufacturing back into original products. The project will deliver 25 direct jobs.
The $60 million Recycling Modernisation Fund Plastics Technology stream funds solutions that increase Australia’s recycling and recovery rates for hard to recycle plastics, enables collection schemes to be scaled up over time, and helps drive Australia’s transition to a safe circular economy.
The first project under this stream was announced in July – a $20 million investment in a recycling facility in Kilburn, South Australia to clean and purify soft plastics such as shopping bags, chip packets and food wrappers.
The Recycling Modernisation Fund is a national initiative expanding Australia’s capacity to sort, process and remanufacture glass, plastic, tyres, paper and cardboard. When combined with co-investment from all states and industry, the Recycling Modernisation Fund will give a $1 billion boost to Australian recycling.
Nationally, the federal government is increasing recycling capacity in Australia by more than a million tonnes every year while creating over 3000 jobs, including over 525 in Victoria.
The Australian Government is also supporting soft plastics recycling by improving packaging design through new national packaging laws. These laws will require packaging to be designed to be recovered, reused, recycled and reprocessed safely in line with circular economy principles.
