Australia’s recycling system has been lurching from one crisis to another for decades. Soft-plastic schemes are collapsing, kerbside contamination is on the rise, and states are still struggling to coordinate a coherent national approach.
But the deeper problem isn’t technical. It’s historical — and moral.
For 70 years, the packaging industry has led advertising and lobbying campaigns that trained us to see waste as an individual failing and a municipal responsibility, rather than a design flaw in the market system itself.
