Plastics Recycling Australia

Have you read the Regional Development Australia Tropical North report indicating that FNQ’s plastic recycling rate is less than 2%?

CAIRNS MAY LOSE RECYCLING CENTRE:

To coincide with the launch of Cairns Regional Council's Recycle Right campaign, Plastics Recycling Australia is updating the status of their Cairns and FNQ Recycling project.

Currently, the proposed Cairns base for a Plastics Recycling Hub is in jeopardy. Although private venture capital funding remains in place for three-quarters of the amount required for this start-up, this investment is conditional on a one-quarter government funding for the first round of establishment costs. To date, Plastics Recycling Australia has not been able to secure the required funding, of approximately $250K toward the first million dollars required to start operations. The venture capital backers have indicated the funds can be from local, state or federal government.

Currently this groundbreaking project, which would see the establishment of the first plastic recycling facility north of Brisbane, has been gaining traction in South Australia. Without Government backing, Cairns may lose out, not only on the facility and the jobs, but also the possibility of viable plastic recovery from the more remote areas of FNQ.

Key project objectives include:
⁃ Create the only plastics recycling facility north of Brisbane
⁃ Cover multiple plastic types -
Phase One PET,
Phase Two HDPE,
Phase 3 Soft plastics.
⁃ Subsidise the collection and transport infrastructure of waste plastic for rural and remote communities across FNQ
⁃ Create up to 30 new jobs
⁃ Introduce an energy-neutral production process, using alternative energy production and storage
⁃ Create a 'blueprint' facility for roll out across Australia, using just in time and small footprint facilities, avoiding the well-documented dangers of large scale storage
⁃ Become a centre of excellence for training and education in Plastic Recycling

Please contact us directly for any further information, or if you would like to show your support for this project remaining in Cairns.
Warren Entsch MP Michael Healy MP Mayor Bob Manning Rob Pyne Brett Moller - Div. 1 Councillor, Cairns Regional Council David Kempton

To coincide with the end of recycling week we are pleased to announce that we now have 100% of the backing required to establish a plastics recycling facility here in Cairns. We have a few hurdles left but we are now more than confident we can hit our original launch targets of having a fully operational PET line before the middle of next year. No more will any of us have to keep repeating 'there's no plastic recycling facility north of Brisbane!' It's been quite a trip to get here and huge thanks go to all that have helped along the way, especially the enthusiasm and support of our local representatives Michael Healy MP and Warren Entsch MP Not only will this project bring a new industry and jobs to the region it will form the blueprint of roll out of regional facilities across the country and it will enable the subsidy of waste collections from rural and remote communities and change the literal tide of plastic waste up and down our beautiful coastline.

Great team meet today with Trevor Evans MP Federal Minister for Waste Reduction & Environmental Management and our very own Warren Entsch MP. We are definitely on the way to a plastic recycling facility in Cairns for 2020, designed to be the blueprint for a roll out across the country. Exciting stuff for the Far North as we get firmly ahead of the curve!

A few things we need to know about recycling in Australia. Below is a great news article that lays out PM Scott Morrison’s August speech about recycling. It's important that we understand just how woeful things are with recycling so we can all help create movement on this critical issue.

We hope you get a chance to read it, but the key takeaways from the PM’s speech are pretty simple:

"Only about 12% of Australian materials are properly recycled.

“We’ve got to start thinking about what we do when that happens. I would like that date to be as soon as is practicable.”

Last year (2018) it cost Australia almost $3BN to export nearly 4.5M tonnes of waste, with most going to Vietnam, Indonesia and China. You read that right; we are paying (we as in taxpayers) for these countries to take our waste, they are not buying it from us!

From the same speech, also reported by the Guardian and Channel 7:

“We are not recycling plastics in this country, it’s going into landfill or it’s going into boats and being sent up to Asia.

“We have got to get a capable recycling industry that can produce materials out of recycling that can be used elsewhere in the economy.

“[Australians] have to be confident that when you put the stuff in the bin it’s not going to end up in landfill or end up on a beach in Indonesia.”

These statements represent a damning indictment of the underdeveloped recycling infrastructure in Australia.

Sorting and sending, sorting and landfilling and sorting and burning are clearly not recycling.

Australia will ban export of recyclable waste 'as soon as practicable', PM vows State environment ministers will consult industry to develop a timeline to improve the recycling system

Today we have reached a fantastic milestone in our quest to bring PET recycling to Far North Queensland and to increase plastic recycling capacity across the entire country. These last months we have been working extensively to site a new, technologically advanced, plastics recycling centre in Cairns. The first of its kind in Australia and quite possibly the first plastics recycling plant to be built north of Brisbane.

In total, this is a million-dollar project, which will not only create a new industry and new jobs in our region but will put us at the forefront of PET recycling development in Australia. We are therefore proud to announce that on the afternoon of Friday 20th September we received confirmation that a private funding deal for our newly formed sister company Rural Recycling Solutions is now in place. This private funding represents the largest proportion of the required investment, and it will underwrite the project going forward. With this backing now in place, we are confident that our target of an operational facility in the second quarter of 2020 is completely achievable.

The plant itself will use the most up-to-date recycling methods and will be treated as a ‘proof of concept’ for the Australian market, and we hope that this will be the first in a roll-out of regional recycling facilities. Recycling is the missing link in Australian waste management, as a nation, we are a net exporter of plastic waste and a net importer of recycled raw material for manufacturers.

Ireland suffers from a surprisingly similar list of problems to those of Australia when it comes to recycling, surrounded by sea with low population density the parallels are easy to make. The article below is about how the Irish government is looking to manage plastics going forward and lays out some key points for waste reduction and processing from which we could all learn. Legislative intervention is essential to direct the waste narrative, as sadly, the cheapest waste handling solution is often the most destructive. However what we are attempting to do goes against prevalent attitudes that imply all recycling waste is a liability and as such, it can ONLY be managed by through government direction and taxpayer funding. No doubt this is true with general waste and kerbside collections. However, with specific waste, for example, aluminium and PET, the demand for recycled material outstrips the demand for virgin material. Recyclers focusing on these areas can operate profitably and potentially subsidise less profitable, more difficult market segments. The time for 'someone should do something' has passed, along with waiting for taxpayer handouts into areas of an industry that can be standalone profitable. Waste is indeed a liability, but recycling it makes it a worthwhile commodity.

Government to ban single-use plastics in waste sector overhaul Bruton to announce plans to cut landfill disposal by 60% and food waste by 50%

Another article grossly underestimating the value of the circular economy to Australia. Admittedly the source material is a recent report that looked into the constraints of the current infrastructure. We can’t emphasise enough that sorting and exporting is not recycling. As it goes neither is sorting and burning, sorting and landfill, or not sorting and anything. If the Prime Minister’s plan to stop waste exports where implemented next week all indications are that there is not even sufficient capacity in Australia to sort the contents of recycling bins let alone actually recycle anything. The ‘bad habits’ this and other articles refer to should be prefaced with the underdeveloped recycling industry, the over reliance on export (still a major part of disposal) and the overconfidence that the public effort is being met by appropriate legislation and corporate governance. Need we repeat recycling languishes at 12% recovery in Australia and 74% in Lithuania...

Recycling bad habits costing Australia $324 million Households need to be convinced the glass, paper and plastic put into their yellow-lid recycling bins has an end market value.