After the bin, what happens to soft plastics?
A group of Circular Plastic Illawarra members and friends visited the saveBOARD recycling facility in Warragamba to find out
Soft plastic packaging can now be dropped off at any Woolworths store or to Flagstaff Group in Unanderra at certain times (check their website). Make sure your soft plastics are clean, dry and empty. Items NOT allowed include rigid plastics and biscuit trays (put these in your yellow bin) and polystyrene foam (this belongs in red bins).
So, what happens to the soft plastics we recycle?
There are several companies that already accept soft plastics for recycling, and more in the pipeline.
A group of Circular Plastic Illawarra (CPI) members and friends visited one of these companies recently to see how it is done.
The saveBOARD recycling facility is in Warragamba, about 90km from Wollongong. The company’s operations manager, Mark Atkinson, talked us through the process and the increasing range of products they manufacture. The material inputs vary depending on which product they’re making. Describing this as the ‘recipe’ for each product, Mark said it could include:
• household soft plastics;
• drink cartons (gable top or silver lined) from container deposit schemes;
• pre-consumer packaging material, such as printed rolls of film that are obsolete;
• plastic/aluminium blister packs.
These materials are shredded and mixed to create the right ‘recipe’ for each production run. The material is compressed and heated to create boards with different thicknesses and between
2.4 to 3m in length. The edges are trimmed and all trimmings are recycled back through the process. A very thin film can be moulded onto the top of the board to change its colour, e.g. for the green boards you can see in Woolworths supermarkets.
The boards can be used to replace plywood, MDF or particleboard in many applications, such as hoardings, internal linings for industrial and commercial buildings or cabinetry. The benefits include >99% recycled content and a lower carbon footprint compared to alternative products.
Other companies recycling soft plastics include Replas (Ballarat and Melbourne), APR (Melbourne) and iQRenew (Taree, NSW).
In other good news, manufacturers and retailers that use soft plastic packaging have formed a not-for-profit stewardship organisation called Soft Plastics Stewardship Australia (SPSA).
CPI is a member of the Circular Illawarra Precinct Taskforce, which is exploring opportunities for new circular economy businesses and jobs in the Illawarra. A precinct for plastic recyclers and other businesses reusing or recycling resources would be a win for our region.
