#redcycle

Graham Readfearn and Lisa Cox, The Guardian:

Jeff Angel, director of the Boomerang Alliance of more than 50 non‐governmental organisations, said the collapse of the [REDcycle] scheme revealed “deeper problems that must be fixed if the community is to have confidence in plastics recycling”.

“REDcycle has been the flagship of industry and government claims they are taking action on soft plastics recycling, but it has only ever been a small operation compared to the 336,000 tonnes of soft plastics used and dumped every year,” he said.

“The fundamental problem is the lack of a market to support an ongoing effort and this can only be fixed by mandatory recycled content rules, which to date have been opposed by industry and government.”

The [Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation] chief executive, Chris Foley, said: “We know that soft plastic is a challenging packaging material for Australia and we have to get better at managing it. This is a short‐term glitch in the system largely related to the pandemic coinciding with unforeseen challenges experienced by reprocessing partners.”

He said the suspension of the REDcycle program was “a good opportunity for Australia's brand owners and the packaging and recycling industries to pause and reset on how we manage soft plastics.”

“This reset will allow Australia to build ongoing sustainable pathways for soft plastic and APCO is working with industry stakeholders to resolve the issue and develop a strong, permanent solution.”

It's disappointing. I did spend the time and effort to separate out and return the plastics, and do want to see the circular economy concept work, so I'm glad that they're for now storing the existing overflow rather than trashing them straight away. But in the meantime, there's still the problem of new rubbish.

We can switch the girls' food to something that's in tins rather than pouches. Those do cost nearly twice as much, but if it's the right thing to do, that's what should be done.

But something needs to be done about the seemingly default mindset that food should be in plastic for shelf appeal.

If Kinder eggs and KitKat can be wrapped in foil, why not all chocolate bars?

If eggs can come in cartons, why should packs of apples/pears/lemons/oranges — the bunches that might have once come in a fishnet bag, as opposed to loose ones — be allowed to be in plastic bags?

Why do boxes of pasta need a little window when a picture can illustrate the food just as effectively?

Do all loaves of bread need to be in plastic, or will a paper bag or wrapping paper work just fine? (I can understand that need with gluten‐free loaves, though, in order to avoid contamination.)

Maybe packs of burgers and sliced ham do need to be in tins if it means getting away from the films covering their plastic trays. It's not like they're bought based on appearance like we might with fruit and vegetable.

Does anybody actually like tearing open the plastic wrap around a multi‐pack of toilet rolls?

Even if all consumers do what they can, it's ultimately the producers that need to work on this. They decide and sign off on packaging long before we see a product hit store shelves. And yea, the supermarkets, those producers' actual customers, should absolutely be using their market position to force changes.

(Maybe plastic films on microwave meals are unavoidable, I don't know. But I suppose that's where regulations about recycled content should come in.)