AFGC WELCOMES GOVERNMENTS PLAN TO TRANSFORM WASTE INDUSTRY

 

The Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) welcomes the Federal Government’s $190 million investment into transforming the waste industry through the Recycling Modernisation Fund
announced today.

AFGC Acting GEO, Dr Geoffrey Annison congratulates the Federal Government on their leadership on this national issue. The investment by Government and industry to close the current gap in local recycling infrastructure is a critical step in developing a packaging circular economy—where greater volumes of post-consumer packaging is recycled into high quality food grade packaging or other high value uses.

“With Government supporting industry commitments and investments in recycling infrastructure, the current shortage of high quality food grade packaging containing recycled content can become an issue of the past as we move towards a circular economy, where packaging is valued as a resource, trust is restored in the recycling system and local employment is strengthened.” Dr Annison said.

The Australian food and beverage sector remain committed to the National Packaging Targets and after exceeding the 30% recycled content target, is now working towards the new voluntary 50% recycled content target.

However, food, beverage and grocery manufacturers need considerable capital investment to innovate their packaging. It comes at a high cost as packaging with high levels of recycled content is currently scarce, inflating costs.

“The support of the Government, especially for smaller to medium enterprises, will help the food, beverage and grocery sector meet government and consumer expectations.

AFGC member companies continue to collaborate in the packaging supply-chain with commitments, collaborations and investments and will continue to work closely with the Government to ensure the targets surrounding waste management can be met.

The food, beverage and grocery manufacturing sector remains proactive in finding innovative solutions and works hard to meet national waste management objectives.

WHAT INDUSTRY IS DOING:

As members of the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), AFGC companies are collaborating to reduce the harmful impact of packaging through the 2025 National Packaging Targets.

These include:

• Make all packaging 100 per cent recyclable, re-usable or compostable;
• 70 per cent of plastic packaging is recycled or compostable;
• 50 per cent average recycled content in packaging;
• Problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics packaging phased out.

AFGC MEMBER ACTION:

• PepsiCo has pledged $650,000 to Greening the Green an initiative with Clean Up Australia, REDcycle and Replas to educate consumers on soft plastic recovery and increase soft plastic recycling across Australia;
• Unilever has committed to halving its use of virgin plastics globally and has recently commenced making plastic packaging containing Australian recycled content across locally made brands such as Dove, TRESemme, OMO, Surf and Toni & Guy;
• Nestlé will work with Australian recycler iQ Renew in a new trial, which aims to see soft plastics collected from over 100,000 homes through kerbside recycling and diverted from landfill. This builds on its global commitment to spend AUD$2.3bn on food grade recycled plastic packaging and reduce use of virgin plastic by one-third by 2025;
• Coca Cola Amatil is using 100 per cent recycled plastic content in 70 per cent of its bottles, and has entered into a Heads of Agreement with Veolia Australia and New Zealand to explore opportunities for a recycled plastic processing plant in Australia;
• Mondelez has committed to making 100 per cent of Cadbury packaging recyclable by 2025 and is currently trialling paper packaging;
• Lion Dairy & Drinks’ is using 25 per cent recycled content in its 300ml PET bottles and all The Juice Brothers 1.5L bottles are made using 50 per cent recycled content.