Nestlé announces soft plastics recycling trial

Announced at the National Plastics Summit in Canberra on 2 March 2020, Nestlé and Australian recycler iQ Renew are launching a trial that aims to collect, sort and process soft plastics from over 100,000 homes through kerbside recycling and therefore be diverted from landfill. The trial aims to turn soft plastics from a waste to a resource. The project will commence with a pilot of 2000 households, with plans to expand to over 100,000 households later in the year, processing approximately 750 tonnes of soft plastic that would otherwise be sent to landfill.

“Most material recovery facilities (MRFs) can’t separate soft plastic from other items in household recycling, so while soft plastic can be recycled, what we lack is a robust, scalable system to collect and process it using existing kerbside collection. We’ve designed the trial so that at the front end, it will support householders to pre-sort their soft plastic and get it into a recycling stream, while behind the scenes, we’ll test using the sorted soft plastic as a resource in a range of different manufacturing processes,” said Danial Gallagher, iQ Renew CEO.

The trial will uncover how households understand soft plastics collection and provide insight into how it affects in-home recycling behaviour. Locations for the trial are currently under consideration.

“While we are working to make all our packaging recyclable, we know that soft plastics is an area that needs greater focus and collaboration. We need to find ways to drive more recycling here. As Nestlé plans to reduce our virgin plastic use and increase the amount of food-grade recycled plastic packaging we use, we need plastic to be collected. Given the low amount of soft plastic collected from consumers today, we hope this trial can unlock the significant potential for soft plastic packaging to become a resource,” said Sandra Martinez, Nestlé Australia CEO.

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