REDcycle is a soft plastic drop off program. We’ve got bins in every Coles and Woolworths, and we’ve invited Australian consumers to return their soft plastic bags and packaging for recycling for 10 years.
REDcycle is now available in every Coles and every Woolworths store across Australia. And as the program has matured, we’ve seen huge increases in consumer participation.
We now have Australian consumers returning 4.5 million pieces of soft plastic packaging every day through the network of REDcycle bins.
We’ve identified that in order to really build a robust and resilient value chain for post consumer soft plastics, it’s really necessary to collaborate with likeminded organisations who are working in other parts of the value chain. With this approach we can identify constraints, work collaboratively and achieve greater impact.
Because we are a product stewardship program, we’ve always operated on the principles of circularity. Everyone involved in the lifecycle of product packaging also plays a role in the best end of life outcome.
That means that we do have many, many brand owners and actual generators of packaging in the marketplace participating all the way through the value chain and supporting us in this journey.
Partnering with iQRenew
I first met Danial Gallagher, who’s the chief executive of iQRenew, a couple of years ago, at the National Plastic Summit in Canberra. We realised that we had a very aligned vision, and iQ Renew was doing some incredibly innovative work around soft plastic processing.
We’ve seen increased consumer participation in REDcycle, especially during the Covid period when everybody was home generating more packaging, where all you could do was go to the supermarket.
What we learnt about consumer behaviour, is that once you start dropping off packaging to the network of REDcycle bins, you don’t stop.
We knew, after the Covid period, that increased volume would continue. It might level out, but we would still see considerably higher volumes of material coming through REDcycle. And it meant that we had to make sure that the pipeline all the way through the value chain was the same size.
Commissioning the SPEC
By joining forces with iQRenew, our first most important cab off the rank is the commissioning of the commercial demonstration plant, also known as SPEC. SPEC stands for Smart Processed Engineered Commodity. It’s what we’ve identified as the missing piece in this value chain puzzle.
It’s so important.
What it means is when you’re looking at mixed post consumer packaging, or soft plastics, you’re looking at a very, complex stream of material made up of lots and lots of different types of plastics, many of them laminated together.
In an average biscuit wrapper, you might see four different types of plastic laminated to each other, with different melting points. The way that they behave in a recycling or processing stream are very different and in ways that are not necessarily compatible.
That’s really challenging. It requires quite a sophisticated and mature approach and a different use of technology.
The purpose of the SPEC facility begins with the understanding that the material being returned by Australian consumers to REDcycle has value.
Extracting value from a complex material stream
How do we extract the maximum value out of a very, very complex material stream?
We’re doing it by joining forces with iQRenew, by working together to commission this first SPEC plant demonstrating that this model can exist and can thrive, and there’s an absolute need for it in the Australian soft plastic value chain. It’s the most important step.
The SPEC is the missing piece of the puzzle for REDcycle, and also the newly emerging Curby program, which REDcycle sees as a complementary. We do believe that Australians need as many recovery options as possible – REDcycle can’t do it alone.
The material coming through from REDcycle, Curby, as well as commercial/industrial streams of material like pallet wrap, and other types of soft plastics, which are what we call the pre consumer stream.
Those are now being received at the SPEC facility and they’re going through different sorting and processing lines in order to extract the maximum value, and create mixed grades of feedstock for high value offtakes all the way down to a lower value offtakes, depending on the quality of the material.
It’s like creating these recipes that go into different end products, depending on the value and that’s the sophisticated and mature approach that was really needed when you’re talking about a complex stream of material.
What’s the goal?
Our goal with the SPEC, the Holy Grail, which all of the industry wants to see, is Australian domestic recycled content going back into Australian packaging.
There’s lots and lots of recycled content film out in the marketplace like grocery bags, and courier satchels, that do have recycled content, which is great, but that recycled content is actually sourced offshore.
It doesn’t necessarily impact the Australian waste stream. We’re not using Australia’s own recyclable material going back into Australia’s own packaging.
When I talk about transforming the value chain and how important this SPEC model is, that’s what we are expecting to achieve in the very near future.
It’s an Australian, domestically produced resin to go back into film packaging for the Australian market with products like bags, bin liners, satchels and primary consumer packaging. That’s something that hasn’t been done before utilising Australian content.
That is probably the most exciting development coming out of SPEC.
Having said that, SPEC maintains an offtake agnostic approach, meaning that if there’s residual material that’s of lower quality, and it’s not a good candidate for a higher value offtake opportunity like resin, we need to have viable end uses for those as well.
A practical and holistic approach is key to how this material is best used in the Australian context. This means that in order for us to extract those higher value materials coming into SPEC, we also have to manage with the lower value streams as well and develop the best, fit for purpose, outcomes.
One of the other offtake opportunities for the lower value or residual materials where there are no higher value end uses, are options like alternate fuels for cement production to displace fossil fuels. That is absolutely an important consideration in the entire suite of offtakes.
And in the middle of that we have incredible products like benches, bollards that REDcycle has worked closely with partners here in Australia to manufacture those, as well as asphalt additives and concrete additives.
There’s an entire range of recycled products and end uses, depending on the quality of the material. The whole purpose of this is to divert this material out of landfill, put it back into the Australian economy in some way with the highest value offtake being domestically produced resin going back into film packaging.
That is something that we’re working very, very hard to achieve and we’re very close.
How the SPEC works
The SPEC is a commercial demonstration facility. It’s where we’re testing and trialling different ways of setting up processing lines. It’s based in Tuggerah in the New South Wales Central Coast.
SPEC has sophisticated sorting and processing equipment designed to separate out all of these different material streams and create fit for purpose feedstocks for manufacturing and other technologies.
In between lock downs, we got this plant up and running. It was commissioned late last year and got up and running in late November. That was a really incredible achievement.
The plan is that we’ll have commercial scale SPEC facilities – this is just the pilot plant.
The plan is for three to four commercial scale facilities in the next 12 to 18 months along the eastern seaboard, as well as Adelaide, that will actually be able to process around 20 to 40,000 tonnes per annum.
Because it is a commercial demonstration facility, the tonnage here is limited to about 5000 to 6000 tonnes,
It’s a smaller footprint plant, and it’s where we’re just testing and trialling the way that different processing lines are laid out and what we want to achieve. Those learnings are going to be implemented and commissioned at the full scale SPEC facilities.
This is a critical first step in this puzzle, and as we’re moving towards Australia truly taking responsibility for our own plastics all the way through to them being circulated back into the economy. This type of plant is so important because we are extracting the maximum value out of the material that’s recovered even though it is very challenging.
It’s estimated that in the consumer packaging space, there’s an estimated 350,000 tonnes placed on market per year.
We want to support the 2025 targets and see 100 per cent of consumer packaging, recyclable, compostable or reusable. Many, brand owners and packaging producers are well on the way.
We also want to see, and this is tricky, 70 per cent of plastic entering the marketplace recycled. It doesn’t mean just picked up or collected. It means recycled.
That’s the really challenging one as far as when you look at all the different targets. That’s the one that we’re really focused on at REDcycle and iQRenew.
There’s a lot of work, all of us collectively that we need to do, but what we’re doing here with REDcycle and Curby feeding into the SPEC plant, is we’re demonstrating what’s possible.
We’re refining the model so that we can roll these out at commercial scale and start to really make a difference in terms of that tonnage.
We’ve got a range of end markets. What’s really, really important is that we stay completely agnostic, and we realise that the SPEC is there to create the quality feedstocks to go into our partners, who use them in their manufacturing processes.
If we look at the hierarchy, the highest value and market is the domestic resin, which goes back into film packaging, because that’s a circular outcome. Film going back into film.
That is one that we’re working towards. It’s extremely important in terms of industry, it’s a top priority.
Manufacturing partners
We also have our manufacturing partners that we’ve worked with here in Australia for many, many years, Replas and Close the Loop, two Australian organisations that are making recycled content products. Replas is doing things like outdoor furniture, bollards, decking. They’ve been around for about 30 years. They’re an offtake partner of REDcycle. They do utilise soft plastics in their products.
Close the Loop is probably our most important partner for the product that they make, TonerPlas, which is an asphalt additive that’s been available in the market since about late 2018, early 2019. And the uptake for Close the Loop and the engagement, the interest in terms of roads infrastructure organisations, state roads authorities, is just going through the roof.
The good news is that’s a great pull through for us, because any civil infrastructure projects pull through a significant amount of soft plastics, so that’s a great fit for purpose feedstock as well.
We’re also looking at other products like a product called R-Flex, which can be injection moulded into products like shopping trolleys, shopping baskets, plastic crates, and things like that.
And then for the residual material that is low value and really there’s not much else we can do with in terms of higher value options, that would be potentially an alternate fuel source to go into cement manufacturing and production.
