Supermarket recycling scheme secretly stockpiling plastic in warehouses

Australia’s largest soft plastic recycling program has collapsed.

The Age reveals hundreds of millions of soft plastic items dropped off at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets have been secretly stockpiled in warehouses, not sent to other companies to make items such as bollards and outdoor furniture.

Melbourne-based REDcycle did not publicly announce the suspension of its recycling program and has for months continued to collect large volumes of soft plastics from drop off points at supermarkets.

On Tuesday night, REDcycle announced the suspension of its program due to “untenable pressure”.

Executive director of Total Environment Centre, Jeff Angel, says the lack of transparency from REDcycle is damaging to the recycling cause.

He says there are “fundamental flaws” in the soft plastic recycling system.

“There was a fire at a factory, there’s been oversupply issues, one of the users of the soft plastic has stopped accepting it,” Mr Angel told Ross and Russel.

“I think as a form of community action we should still take them to Coles and Woolworths, even if Coles and Woolworths say they’re not accepting them, because we need the community to tell the producers and government to put in a proper product stewardship scheme that involves all producers and importantly has recycled content rules.”

Press PLAY below to hear what the Total Environment Centre boss thinks Australians should do