Addressing challenges around soft plastic recycling in Australia

In Australia Close the Loop Group uses mixed plastic packaging from several sources, recycle it and turn it into a variety of valuable products.

For example, we combine soft plastics with recycled toner powder and other key ingredients to manufacture TonerPlas®, which is then supplied to companies for inclusion in their asphalt mix. TonerPlas® improves the longevity of roads, and has been used in resurfacing projects across Australia including the Monash and M80 freeway upgrades in Victoria.  We also use waste soft plastics in the production of our recycled plastic injection-molding resin, rFlex® – which can then also be recycled and reused.

We are the largest user of the post-consumer soft plastics that have been collected through the RedCycle program and have worked with them for several years, taking huge volumes of this highly-contaminated, post- consumer material.

We understand we are the only company that has been able to process 100% of the material received from RedCycle, in-line with our ‘Zero Waste to Landfill’ approach.

However, despite using the material at scale at our plant, the volumes of material recovered by RedCycle appear to exceed the capacity of any sole business to recycle.

The use of these materials by Close the Loop is possible due to the novel intellectual property that the business has developed, to process the mixed, post-consumer soft plastic waste from sources such as RedCycle that would otherwise be difficult to reuse for new applications. Other products using post-consumer soft plastic waste can only use the materials at small percentages due to the poor quality of the feedstock, in addition to a vital lack of end-market buy-back for these type of recycled content items.

While we are currently upgrading our TonerPlas® line, we will be back in full production by July 2023 and will require large volumes of soft plastic material to meet demands for both TonerPlas® and rFlex® production.

Why are soft plastics hard to recycle?

To protect products from deterioration, soft plastic packaging typically contains multiple types of plastic joined together in very thin layers. This creates issues at end of life as these materials cannot be separated, and hence provide a low grade of recycling feedstock with limited use. For example, post-consumer soft plastic waste cannot simply be reused for food-grade applications, due to contamination from the various material types, in addition to the presence of organic food matter and bacteria that is difficult to clean and process.

The advancement of technology and the simplification of soft plastic materials to remove multiple polymer types will help, and the industry has already begun switching packaging structures towards mono-polymer (single plastic) packaging specifications. However, the yields for high quality recycled soft plastic may still only reach 40-50%. Society still requires solutions for the rest of this waste material, to ensure it doesn’t go to landfill or waste to energy.

The importance of mechanical recycling

Products like TonerPlas® are key to recycling soft plastic waste, providing a greater product yield for the complex material stream that cannot be fully met by other recycled content products, or by future chemical /advanced recycling initiatives.

While there is a lot of talk about chemical recycling of soft plastic waste, this capability  will not be ready in Australia until around 2030 and will still require a higher quality of feedstock than materials currently collected . Additional commercial barriers for chemical recycling include cost, product yields, and carbon footprint, which is where the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of these recycling plants will be key.