We’ve all been told to cut back on waste to help prevent environmental crisis on Earth. Reducing waste helps reduce the need to spend time and energy digging up fresh materials, and helps reduce the amount of trash we have to go out and bury in the ground in landfills. Recycling is a big part of this drive, allowing us to divert waste by reprocessing it into fresh new materials.
Sadly, though, recycling isn’t always as magical as it seems. As Australia has just found out, it’s harder than it sounds, and often smoke and mirrors prevent the public from understanding what’s really going on. Here’s how soft plastic recycling went wrong Down Under.
Yeah, Those Are Totally Recyclable!
REDcycle was established to recycle soft plastics, with the vast majority collected from deposit bins at supermarkets. Credit: REDcycle
In Australia, an operation called REDcycle had long operated a network set up for the recycling of soft plastics. These are defined as plastic packaging items that one can readily crumple up in the hand – things like bread bags, cereal box liners, postal satchels, and even woven polypropylene carry bags. REDcycle placed collection bins at supermarkets around the country to allow people to drop off soft plastics collected in their household. After collection, the soft plastics were processed by REDcycle and handed off to partner organizations. These companies remanufactured the plastics into items like furniture, bollards, and signage. Others used the recycled plastic as a feedstock to produce asphalt additives for road construction.< ..
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