Australia’s major supermarket chains say they have offered to take responsibility for ensuring thousands of tonnes of soft plastic do not end up in landfill due to the failure of a recycling scheme.
In a statement on Thursday night, Coles and Woolworths said they would provide safe storage for plastic material stockpiled in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia “while recycling options are explored”.
The failed recycling scheme, run by REDcycle on behalf of the supermarket chains, led to more than 12,000 tonnes of plastic collected by the public being warehoused since 2018.
The REDcycle program was suspended in November. The NSW Environment Protection Authority issued clean-up orders to Coles and Woolworths earlier this month for 15 warehouses and storage depots. Tony Chappel, the EPA’s chief executive, said the plastic was not safely stored, a fire hazard and may “unfortunately end up in landfill”.
It prompted the Boomerang Alliance, a coalition of 55 conservation groups, to accuse the packaging industry of using the REDcycle scheme as a marketing ploy to mask how little was being done to improve recycling rates. It urged the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, to stop the stockpiled waste being dumped.
The supermarkets said they made the offer to take responsibility for the plastic after a meeting of the national soft plastics taskforce. REDcycle, which still has control of the plastic storage sites, was yet to respond to their offer.
Coles and Woolworths said if REDcycle agreed they would “implement an interim strategy, such as safely storing material until it can be viably processed for recycling”.
Each company would make “an initial multimillion-dollar contribution” to a soft plastics recycling fund that would pay for storage and management of the stockpiled material, they said.
Woolworths chief executive, Brad Banducci, said the company “knew Australians had been let down” and it was “working to make it right”.
“Coles and Woolworths have taken this step to provide reassurance to the public that the soft plastics they took the effort to deposit in REDcycle’s bins won’t be unnecessarily sent to landfill,” he said. “We know this may take some time.”
The companies said if they were given access to the stockpiles they would need to assess whether any of the plastic had degraded to a point that it was not suitable for reprocessing. They said they would “work to recycle as much of the material they are given as possible”.
Plibersek welcomed the announcement, but said more work was needed before recycling collection for soft plastic could start again. She said REDcycle had been Australia’s largest soft plastic collection program, but it faced a “series of processing and recycling issues” that were compounded by a fire shutting down its largest recycling facility.
She said REDcycle collection points at Coles and Woolworths had been the only way to return soft plastics for recycling for most people.
“Australians went to great effort to sort and take their plastics back to supermarkets to ensure they were recycled by REDcycle. I am determined to ensure that this effort was not in vain and that they can be confident their plastics won’t go to landfill,” Plibersek said.
Earlier this month, the Boomerang Alliance said REDcycle was collecting less than 1% of the 449,000 tonnes of soft plastic used by Australians each year, and a more ambitious solution was needed.
The alliance’s director, Jeff Angel, called on the federal government to strengthen product stewardship laws to ensure the use of plastic packaging started to fall and voluntary recycling targets set for 2025 – including 70% of plastics being recycled or composted and packaging having 20% recycled content – were met.
