Trials for the National Plastics Recycling Scheme (NPRS) have yielded positive results following a survey of residents taking part.
The NPRS is a soft plastics advanced recycling scheme being developed by the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) that enables residents to put their soft plastics in a specially supplied bag and place it in the household recycling bin.
Results from over 1000 responses to households taking part in trials held in Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales, indicates that people who had no used the now-defunct REDcycle store drop-off scheme have started recycling household soft plastics via kerbside collection.
Tanya Barden, CEO of the AFGC, said store-return schemes could not be the solution for large-scale soft plastics recycling in Australia.
“While work is continuing on a short-term solution to REDcycle’s suspension, the NPRS project is a long-term solution dealing with large-scale collection and recycling.
“What store-return plastic recycling demonstrated is the dedication of Australians to recycling soft plastics.”
Barden said that the NPRS is an industry-led scheme where the companies putting soft plastics into the marketplace are taking the lead and providing a real solution.
The NPRS model collects the soft plastics at kerbside and recycles them into new, food-grade plastic packaging, creating a new, onshore circular system.
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