More than 14,000 tonnes of soft plastics will be diverted from South Australian landfills every year, due to a $20 million investment in advanced recycling technology. Recycling Plastics Australia in Kilburn will clean and purify soft plastics such as shopping bags, chip packets and food wrappers to create feedstock for new soft plastic packaging.
This will help Australia to develop an advanced recycling supply chain that will turn soft plastic waste back into packaging. The project will deliver 45 jobs.
This project, is a partnership between the Federal and South Australian Governments, and is among the first announced under the new Recycling Modernisation Fund Plastics Technology stream.
The $60 million stream funds solutions that increase Australia’s recycling and recovery rates for hard-to-recycle plastics, enables collection schemes to be scaled up over time, and helps drive Australia’s transition to a safe circular economy.
The Recycling Modernisation Fund is a national initiative expanding Australia’s capacity to sort, process and remanufacture glass, plastic, tyres, paper and cardboard. When combined with co-investment from all states and industry, the Recycling Modernisation Fund will give a $1 billion boost to Australian recycling.
Read more: Tasmania’s plastic recycling capability increased
The Australian Government is also supporting soft plastics recycling by improving packaging design through new national packaging laws. These laws will require packaging to be designed to be recovered, reused, recycled and reprocessed safely in line with circular economy principles.
Nationally, the Federal Government is increasing recycling capacity in Australia by more than a million tonnes every year while creating over 3,000 jobs, including over 600 in South Australia.
“Recycling Plastics Australia has a proud history leading the circular economy by recycling plastics that are difficult to process,” said Peter Gregg, Chair, Recycling Plastics Australia.
“We are grateful that the Australian and South Australian Governments have supported this $40 million dollar project that is to transform soft plastics recycling in Australia.’
“This funding will see our Kilburn site in South Australia become the prominent soft-plastic recycling processor in the country, with materials recycled here and sold into local and global packaging markets.”