Liz Kasell, who founded the REDcycle soft plastic recycling scheme which collapsed with thousands of tonnes of plastic stockpiled in warehouses across the country, insists she believed materials being collected by the company would be saved from landfill.
Genuine question:
Assume that it’s financial viable, is there anything stopping me from establishing a manufacturing facility whose goal is to produce as much plastic waste as possible?
Because if there isn’t, there’s our problem…
There are no facilities in Australia which can recycle soft plastics in commercial quantities. It requires a special process which is very energy intensive and expensive to run (pyrolysis / depolymerisation). The only country in the world which does it at commercial scale is Japan, and even they only process around 10% of their soft plastics. Still, it’s better than the 0% we do here.
It’s unlikely to ever be done here in Australia because it’s a lot more expensive to recycle this way than just making new plastic.