Victoria’s Plan For Kerbside Soft-Plastic Recycling!

Victoria’s Plan for Kerbside Recycling! 

As we all (sadly) know, Australia’s soft plastic recycling program, REDcycle, recently announced a pause, removing all collection bins until mid-2023. 

After just a few short weeks, the impact of losing this soft plastic recycling program is already apparent in our regular rubbish bins - fortunately, Government officials have taken notice too. 

Victoria’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Action has officially announced that Victorian households will have soft plastic recycling bins!

While we know recycling is not the solution, Victoria has a lot of single-use plastic bans in their plans too, so together with this new bin, we hope all states follow. 

Let’s unpack this new recycling initiative...

Victoria’s New Recycling Systems

While we don’t have all the details yet, we do know a key component of the new recycling program across Victoria will involve the introduction of four kurbside recycling bins. 

In these four bins, soft plastics such as wrappers and chip bags will be collected for in-state recycling. But that’s not all, these bins will also see difficult-to-recycle items like pizza boxes, soiled food containers, and coffee cups being collected for a new life too.

So when will this take place? Bins will be expected to be rolled out state-wide by 2030... but we hope to see it come into effect earlier!

Where Does It Go?

Of course, one of our first questions was: where are all of these new bin contents headed? 

The Victorian Government is investing $1 million towards a new recycling facility for all of these tricky items in Campbellfield, Victoria. The funds will help Upcycled Building Materials Australia Pty Ltd put up the ‘saveBOARD’ facility while an additional $175,000 goes towards helping this facility process oversized green waste into amazing soil additives for the farming industry. 

This facility will then turn our soft plastics, single-use coffee cups, and pizza boxes into sustainable building products. A predicted 4000 tonnes of materials are expected to be delivered each year!

The Future of Australia’s Waste

According to the experts, Victoria’s Government is set to divert as much as 80% of waste by 2030. While a large part of this is thanks to the new four-bin system we’ve talked about here, there are also single-use plastics bans coming into action from February 1st, now we're talking! More on this here.

Alongside these steps, we hope to see Victoria educate on how to reduce such waste too so we don't have to rely on these recycling solutions for a cleaner future. 

We can only imagine how this move will inspire the rest of Australia to take action, so keep your eyes and ears peeled for more good news from right here in Aus.

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out our Happy Earth News Blog to stay inspired on our journey to reducing your waste and saying sayonara to plastics for good. 

Until next week GFZ's, 

GFZ Team xox