Fourteen years since the Product Stewardship Act 2011 – when Australia’s product stewardship recycling framework began to take shape – it’s clear that collaboration, innovation and persistence are essential ingredients for success. From coffee pods and glass windscreens to sheets and shirts, REMONDIS can deliver tailored solutions to give second lives to items that would otherwise end up as landfill.
Each product stewardship challenge is unique, requiring behind-the-scenes expertise, systems, technology and infrastructure. With a global operational history spanning 90 years, REMONDIS can call on international know-how to find ways forward – although many of its Australian product stewardship successes are proudly home grown, due to support from industry participants who are equally driven to see outstanding circular economy results.
The partnership between REMONDIS and Nespresso is a case in point. When the two companies joined forces to address the issue of aluminium coffee pod waste, the challenges were significant. With some three million coffee pods used daily in Australia, only ten per cent were recycled and some 8,500 tonnes were going to landfill annually. How would you go about making a difference, notwithstanding that the size of coffee pods prevents them from being recycled in standard kerbside facilities? Coffee pods might be small, but the job of recycling them is huge.
Nespresso was up for the challenge, implementing collection programs at stores, workplaces and communities across Australia. An example of industry working with industry was Nespresso engaging with the hospitality sector’s Accor, resulting in waste pods from some 450 hotels across Australia being diverted from landfill and returned to the circular economy.
REMONDIS coordinates the national scheme’s complex logistics function, overseeing more than 27,000 collections from Nespresso customers as well as direct collections from Nespresso boutiques. The process is digitally enabled at the front end by an app for customers to request a collection, and at the back end with detailed environmental and operational reporting from REMONDIS’s Client Portal – with both applications developed in-house by REMONDIS’s
digital team.
Each month up to 180 tonnes of caps and coffee waste ends up at REMONDIS’s resource recovery facility at Tomago, New South Wales. A custom-built separation process sees residual coffee removed from pods and given a second life as compost, while the pods are compressed and ultimately used to make other aluminium products. About 2,500 kilos of pods and coffee scraps can be processed per hour at Tomago.
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“We’ve tailor-made our de-packing process to meet the specific requirements of the Australian market,” REMONDIS Australia’s chief sales officer Nathan Radley said. “A lot of people would be surprised by the logistics behind recycling humble coffee pods, especially the work that goes into transporting them to one location. But the efforts of all parties along the supply chain are worth it: around 98 percent of all pods and coffee scraps we receive are recycled.”
In September 2025 REMONDIS joined R. M. Williams, Sheridan and BlockTexx to support Australia Post in showcasing a circular solution for textiles.
“At Australia Post’s Circular Proof of Concept Showcase, we outlined REMONDIS’s textile product stewardship initiatives in Europe, and how similar solutions might be implemented in Australia,” Radley said. “The take-away was that big things are possible if industry participants join hands to make a difference. As is the case with many product stewardship initiatives, that can involve changes at the design and production end, through to the delivery and retailing phases. The right recovery processes and logistics backed by clear communication across the players – including consumers – are also needed to ensure environmentally and financially sustainable results.
“With the right processes and a whole-of-industry approach, textiles from used clothes, for example, can be diverted from landfill and reused, re-purposed to make new clothes, turned into new fabric-based products, polyester, cellulose, stuffing and other materials.”
REMONDIS Australia is also poised to ramp up auto windscreen recycling on behalf of a national supplier, by introducing specialist glass crushing, sizing and recycling capabilities.
“For the past 11 years we’ve sent windscreens to third party disposal sites for recycling but with recent supply disruptions and limited recycling in some areas, we’re establishing our own processing capabilities to complement the collection logistics we already oversee,” said Trent Morton, general manager of REMONDIS Australia’s Integrated and Managed Services division.
“There’s quite a process behind separating the glass and laminate that make up windscreens, but once that’s done the glass can be recycled for industrial applications including the making of concrete, pool filters and sand blasting material. We’re currently diverting about 4,000 tonnes of windscreens from landfill annually and expect that figure to rise as we become more hands-on.”
Björn Becker, REMONDIS CEO Asia-Pacific and West Europe, said REMONDIS’s specialised Integrated and Managed Services division gave it an edge when taking on product stewardship initiatives.
“REMONDIS IMS provides a suite of services uniquely tailored to conceiving and delivering complex product stewardship schemes, spanning multiple sites across Australia,” Becker said. “That includes project management for both logistics and processing, 24/7 customer support and detailed operational and environmental reporting via the this digital platform.
“When government or commercial partners engage with REMONDIS they know they’re collaborating with a company operating confidently across the full resource recovery supply chain, supported by both local and global expertise.”