The City of Ballarat is among a group of Victorian and South Australian councils to pilot kerbside soft plastics collection as part of a recycling scheme funded by the Australian Food and Grocery council.

During a 12 month trial, residents will be able to recycle ‘scrunchable’ plastics – such as bread and cereal bags, frozen vegetable packets, cling wrap, bubble wrap and plastic toilet paper wrap – by putting them in an orange bag which is deposited in recycling bins.

The orange-bagged soft plastics will be transported to a local materials recovery factory where the waste will be sorted, cleaned and processed for recycling into new products including packaging.

The Ballarat pilot will involve 10,000 residents.  Mayor Des Hudson hopes it will inform the design of a large scale soft plastics kerbside collection program, after residents said during consultation for council’s kerbside waste and recycling transition plan that they wanted solutions for soft plastic waste.

“Recycling soft plastics allows them to be sorted, processed and ultimately transformed back into new packaging or other products, keeps them out of landfill and gives them a new life,” he said in a statement.

“The City of Ballarat is committed to reducing waste going to landfill and creating a circular economy, that keeps materials in use for as long as possible.”

Positive community response

Ballarat is one of nine councils currently participating in AFGC’s soft plastics recycling scheme, which completed trials during 2022-2023 and is now rolling out larger scale phase-two pilots. 

A report on last year’s trials released in April showed a positive community response, with 52 per cent participating fortnightly and 70 per cent expressing high satisfaction for the service. Bag-in-a-bin was the preferred collection method for 92 per cent of respondents.

The findings were based more than 1,000 responses to surveys of households taking part in the trials held in six council areas across Victoria, South Australia and NSW. 

AFGC Director of Sustainability Barry Cosier says the organisation has been working with all levels of government on a solution for soft plastics.  

“While soft plastics are useful for packaging everything from peas to bread, parcels and garden mulch, we need large quantities to be efficiently collected to instill confidence to invest in recycling and to remanufacture it into product and packaging again,” he said.

The initiative comes in the wake of the the now-defunct REDcycle store drop-off scheme.

AFGC CEO Tanya Barden said while REDcycle had been valuable, store-return schemes could not be the solution for large-scale soft plastics recycling in Australia. 

“While work continues on a short-term solution to REDcycle’s suspension, the National Plastics Recycling Scheme project is a long-term solution dealing with large-scale collection and recycling,” she said.

Main image: Environmental consultant Julie White, Mayor Cr Des Hudson, Australian Food and Grocery Council representative Helen Millicer, APR Kerbside head Marne Thorpe and Mars Wrigley Australia R&D Director Chris Hutton (Image supplied by City of Ballarat).