Australia's soft plastics recycling industry is operating at nearly triple the capacity it was at now-collapsed national recycler REDcycle's peak, but consumers are yet to be convinced.

A ray of light.

These kinds of projects may fail or experience setbacks from time to time, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try again in different ways if the cause is right and just.

  • phant
    7·
    8 days ago

    I’m glad they included this snippet in the article:

    While recycling is one part of the solution to reducing Australia’s waste footprint, RMIT sustainable development expert Usha Iyer-Raniga said it was time to consider systemic changes that would reduce the waste itself.

    “You can’t just rely on recycling,” Professor Iyer-Raniga said.

    "You want to be a society where eventually, you don't want to create waste."

    It’s not a call to action of: Buy more soft plastic for us to recycle! It should be: You can now trust us to recycle any soft plastic you have, but society needs to reduce production and consumption as well.
    If this reduction is done successfully then the recycling plants will be in a weird spot of needing to plan to reduce throughput/capacity down the road.

    But yeah, I’m also glad soft recycling is back and better.

    • PetulantBandicoot@aussie.zoneEnglish
      5·
      8 days ago

      Yeah, reducing has always been the first step in the chain, followed by reuse, and then finally recycling.

      Small win though, keep it up team.