On one hand, there’s the person who put their roast chicken bag – cooked chook still inside – in the soft plastics recycling bin. On the other, there’s the group of about 55 passionate people who attended the ‘Positive pathways for soft plastics’ event at the University of Wollongong’s Innovation Campus on Friday, May 10.
The number of people who attended was “really heartening”, said the event's convenor, sustainability advisor Dr Helen Lewis, Adjunct Professor with the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney.
“We had to turn people away,” Helen said. “We closed off registrations a couple of weeks before. We could have probably had another 20 people, but the room capacity was really only about 55, comfortably.”
Founded in 2022 after the collapse of the REDcycle program, Circular Plastics Illawarra is an advocacy group that brings together people from government, industry and academia, as well as concerned citizens.
The group's founder, Kylie Flament, now CEO of the Social Enterprise Council of NSW & ACT, emceed the May 10 event.
“She kicked it off back in December 22,” Helen said. “So it was really nice to have her there to MC.”
Panellists were Steve Morriss, head of Circular Economy at Close the Loop Australia; supply chain analyst Dr Tillmann Böhme of UOW; Alyssa Vilar, a waste education project and policy officer from Wingecarribee Shire Council; Helen Millicer, a consultant for the Australian Food and Grocery Council’s National Plastics Recycling Scheme; and Emma Wishart, a senior policy officer at the Circular Economy Branch of the NSW Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).
Helen said the EPA is being proactive about the plastics problem. “They come to meetings, they're very supportive, because they're doing a lot on plastics.”
The talks ran for two hours, with speakers unfazed even by a fire drill interrupting half way. They simply carried on presenting outdoors and it was clear from the response afterwards that they’d held their audience's attention throughout.
“The highlight for me was the high strong level of engagement from the people who came along,” Helen said. “The questions from the group were really spot on. They were great questions and the panel was excellent.
“The other highlight for me was just the connections that were made. One of the reasons we organised it was to give people an opportunity to meet other people, particularly, the business people meeting the council, business people meeting each other. We had people there that were collectors. We had people there that were recyclers and we had people there that were manufacturers. They met and there was follow-up after that.”
The meeting was a chance to update the community on developments since the REDcycle scheme fell apart in November 2022, when people who'd been diligently filling supermarket bins with soft plastics discovered that 11,000 tonnes of waste had not been processed and instead were being stockpiled in storage units around the country.
“A lot of people are still worried about what to do with their soft plastics,” Helen said. “So I think that was an important objective as well, just to let people know that things were happening.
“They're happening too slowly, but they're happening.”
Wingecarribee Shire Council's soft plastics collection trial is an example of progress.
“I think it's brilliant,” Helen said. “It's only a pilot, so they're using it to gather information … drop-off facilities like that are definitely part of the solution. Because curbside collection is coming, but it's going to be slow and it won't suit every council, for various reasons.
“I think ultimately the solution will be a combination of curbside recycling, drop-off at retail stores and drop-off at council recycling centres.”
Helen hopes one day Wollongong City Council might follow Wingecarribee's example. “It's a good first step, because curbside requires a change of contracts, whereas a drop-off option is relatively easy to implement and at least provides the really motivated community members with a solution.
“So yes, I would think that's definitely part of the planning – to do something simple like a drop-off at Whytes Gully and plan to have soft plastics added to curbside when the waste contracts are renewed.”
Circular Plastics Illawarra is preparing a submission for Wollongong Council's 10-year recycling and waste strategy and Helen encourages all residents to have a say in its 'Talking Waste' survey by Monday, May 20.
“It's important that as many people as possible respond to that council survey,” she said.
“Once [council] put out their draft strategy later in the year, that's when the community will have another chance to provide feedback.”
Circular Plastics Illawarra will also be calling for public feedback to guide the organisation’s next steps.
“Next we're going to send out a community survey to get feedback from the broader community on what they currently do with their soft plastics, their preference for different recovery systems, what information they'd like from us,” Helen said.
The survey will go out in the next month via social media and other networks, and the group hopes to run another public event in about six months.
In the meantime, as the 'roast chicken recycled in its bag' anecdote shared at May's event shows, lots of public education is needed.
Helen said a recent Cleanaway survey revealed that many people don't know which bin to put items in.
“For soft plastics, only 45% of people had the right answer, which is ‘put in your red bin at the moment’. So that means 55% were either putting it in their yellow recycling bin or their green organics bin. And if it's put in the yellow bin, it causes havoc.
"People are just confused. It's a big challenge because we need continuous education – you can't just do it once and put out a brochure.”
No one is sure when we might see soft plastics recycling in Wollongong, disappointing news for the hopeful locals collecting plastics in their garages.
“I'm not particularly keen on stockpiling until we actually know that there's a date coming," Helen said. "If someone lives up in the Wingecarribee Shire, then there's that drop-off at the community recycling centre.
“I think we'd encourage people just to use as little [plastic] as possible.
“Try to be efficient with not bringing as much as possible into the house and keep putting pressure on the council.”
Find out more
Have your say by May 20 on Wollongong City Council's waste management goals. Complete this short survey.
Read Kylie Flament's 'Positive pathways for soft plastics' report on LinkedIn. Circular Plastics Illawarra has compiled information on options for soft plastics in the Illawarra – read their paper here.