With the update on performance against the 2025 National Packaging Targets just released by APCO, and circularity in plastics packaging in the spotlight, Lindy Hughson asked Helen Millicer, lead consultant on the both the Federal Government Report into circular products and the AFGC’s National Plastic Recycling Scheme, for her views on actions that need to be taken.
What’s clear from the Federal Government Report and Recommendations, and from high level conversations that have been had at industry forums in recent months, to achieve circularity in plastics generally and in packaging, we must change strategy.
“If we want to get anywhere close to achieving results, we need different solutions, and those solutions are readily and frequently used overseas. They're not currently in use in Australia, or certainly not sufficiently,” Helen Millicer says.
“I know there is a growing appetite for governments and industry to sit down and form a strategy with plans for coordinated delivery of results, where we do more than just provide education. So much of what we have done to date is predominantly around public education,or providing guidance material. We have willing governments, industries and businesses, let’s bring them together, plan, hold them to account and create systemic improvements.”
Millicer believes we need a national Circular Plastics Strategy with phased-in regulations, levies, with significantly different grant programs, loans and rebates; along with supply chain collaboration and partnerships for different polymer targets to 2025 and 2030.
“We are ready for a real considered action plan with right levers and a phased timeframe, ending wishcycling and indecision.”
She goes on to make the point that many in the resource recovery value chain, as well as APCO, are coming to the table: “For example, there is no value in collecting plastic if there is nowhere for it to go. We recognise we need end markets, contracts and traced material with good governance.”
Lessons emerging from the REDcycle debacle, and indeed the closure of other plastics-related companies in 2022, show clearly that the current economics for collection and processing do not stack up.
Millicer says, “We need special schemes, and smart financial levers at both landfill and for processing. We need new levers as the economics for plastics are currently broken.”
To make the investment in recycling infrastructure feasible, she stresses, we need impactful, steady and dependable Buy-Recycled content programs initiated by governments, industry sectors and businesses. Market pull can be reinforced by forming and using recycled content labelling and certifications, she adds.
Circularity of plastic packaging cannot happen in isolation from other plastic products, according to Millicer, who says there are fundamental connections in the supply chain that have been ignored for too long. A thriving, locally based pre-processing and resin manufacturing industry is essential for success.
On the subject of collection systems, Millicer says, “We have been absorbed in kerbside collection, which only works for households and domestic packaging, not commercial and industrial applications, or construction and demolition sectors. To recover more plastics and packaging at scale to be economic for reprocessing (to achieve major improvements in recycling rates and lower emissions) we must create new collection or drop-off recovery systems from various sources, and plan in terms of material and polymer type – for example PP, PE, PVC which are the big three polymers used in Australia – and change pricing at landfill for diversion of recyclable plastics including packaging.
She adds that reusable packaging has been largely untouched in Australia, unfunded, with too few trials and extended support. “Every tonne of reusable packaging is one tonne less of single-use packaging and saves around five tonnes of CO2 emissions.”
She concludes: “Systemic change is required for any improvement in Australia. If we don’t know where we are going, we don’t know how to get there. We are unplanned, unmapped, and travelling blind, and it’s time we change that.”
*Helen Millicer is eminently qualified to comment. She is one of the first industry professionals in Australia to explore and articulate the practical steps for Australia’s transition to a more circular economy and has won a number of awards and scholarships for her contributions to society. She has worked in national sustainability roles for two decades, working on projects including Victoria’s first 50 Year Water Plan, renewable energy, organics recycling, plastics and chemicals manufacturing and recently on Victoria’s transforming Kerbside Reform.
Millicer is consultant lead on the National Plastic Recycling Scheme NPRS, the first EPR stewardship scheme for Australia, for soft plastics with the Australian Food and Grocery Council. She is also currently chair of the Churchill Trust Panel for Industry, Agriculture and Logistics, an inaugural director for the Tasmanian Government Board on recycling, curator of the annual Aust/NZ SPE Plastics and Circular Economy Conference, and founder of ClimateWise Associations.
