A big zero: Was the soft plastic recycling scheme a waste of time and money?

Thursday, 3 January 2019

Was the soft plastics recycling scheme a big zero?

OPINION: It's over. We can no longer export our soft plastics, aka plastic bags, to Australia and then never think of them ever again.

You didn't know we did that? Well it's true.

In 2015 plastics industry front group The Packaging Forum got a grant (which it matched with industry contributions) worth more than $700,000 from the Government's Waste Minimisation Fund to go towards a Soft Plastics Recycling Project.

This project brought to you those rather unsightly big plastic bins (made from recycled plastic, of course) which used to be located at the front of many supermarkets, next to the Sally Army food bins and usually before you get to the community noticeboard.

*** New Zealand's old plastic bags will be made into fence posts for farms

The rules were literally on the side of the bin. And yet, still, the rubbish went in.

* Call to recycle more farm plastic waste**

You could stick your soft plastics like plastic bags, along with bread bags, frozen food bags, confectionery or biscuit wrap, chip bags, pasta and rice bags, courier envelopes and toilet paper and other soft plastics you dutifully collected into the bin and then waltz out the door, lighter, more committed to the environment and just generally a better human than most (though probably pushing a trolley filled with more soft plastics).

As the forum says into those bins could go 'basically anything made of plastic which can be scrunched into a ball'.

How marvellous.

Was it really marvellous?

Well, the scheme has now been disbanded, for the summer at least, with the packaging group announcing last month that 'changes to global recycling have meant that we're now collecting more than we can currently process in New Zealand'.

'We wanted to let you all know that we have taken the difficult decision to suspend collections for the soft plastic scheme from 31st December 2018, with plans to resume a sustainable service in April 2019,' it says.

'A suspension to the service will give us time to work with existing processing partners to build capacity, as well as find new and innovative processing solutions.'

But why?

As the packaging forum itself admits, soft plastics have no value, unlike glass bottles or aluminium (when are we getting a pay to recycle scheme for cans in New Zealand?).

Maybe the solution could be found in wearable art?

And things without value are generally not wanted. Go figure.

There was one company in Australia, Replas, which we were paying to take our soft plastics, and turn them into fence posts and park benches and the like that could be sold back to us.

But there was just too much soft plastic. So, so, many plastic bags and packaging, that Replas in 2018 refused to take any more from us.

So then we started putting them in storage. Yikes.

And then the plastics started moulding. Yeesh.

So recycling soft plastics is not a sustainable option to dealing with soft plastics waste?

What's not to love with our plastic waste? Why won't the world take it any more?

You would be correct in working out that paying a company to take something that is difficult to recycle did little to stop us buying and consuming products which come packaged in materials that are difficult to recycle.

Now, the packaging industry was pushing hard for councils to buy back the products made from the recycled bags and such.

If we would only buy back our recycled soft plastics, the thinking went, we would be virtually dealing with the issue! We would pay to recycle our soft plastics and to have it all made into something else and then we would buy it back!

Problem solved.

And, in fact, there are also two companies in New Zealand which can make products from recycled soft plastics, and one of them - Future Post - came onto the scene in November. Success! Right?

Wrong. It is all just far too little in terms of actually dealing with the mountains of soft plastic waste generated.

Should we all just give up and start nesting in our soft plastics pile?

Possibly, though it might be a touch scratchy. What we do know without a doubt is that we have too much waste from soft plastics.

It's an easy win that pushes the problem to consumers to ban single use plastic bags, but soft plastic is all around us. While we can avoid single use plastic bags in the bakery and fruit and vege section, much of the soft plastics we get is difficult to dodge.

The packaging industry says its looking at how it can minimise soft plastics waste, and there are some new products that are compostable coming onto the market, or in the market, but many of the soft plastics are used to ensure products get to us in good condition because we are fussy old creatures.

Maybe now that we can no longer head back to the supermarket to recycle our soft plastics by paying to send them across to Australia we should start leaving our soft plastics at the store?

That will totally work.