Tanya Plibersek says Coles and Woolworths must ‘step up’ to fix plastic recycling crisis

Environment minister Tanya Plibersek says Coles and Woolworths need to come up with a solution to the pause on their soft plastic recycling scheme. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Environment minister Tanya Plibersek has called on Australia’s two biggest supermarket chains to come up with a “viable solution” after they were forced to hit pause on their major soft plastic recycling scheme.

REDcycle announced late yesterday it was pausing collections at Woolworths and Coles, where customers were returning more than 5 million pieces of soft plastics every day.