Is recycling a load of old rubbish?
You’ll be surprised how much of what we put in the yellow bin comes back as recycled packaging.
How much of your aluminium can, glass jar or plastic bottle has been recycled?
Grocery shopping inevitably means bringing home not only the desired products but all the packaging, wrappings, and plastic and glass containers as well.
When I was a boy, doing the shopping with Mum meant having the meat wrapped in paper. There were no plastic bags, let alone the impossible-to-break-into meat packaging ubiquitous in today’s supermarkets.
At the same time, recycling of packaging has improved. Most of us have two bins for collection – everyday rubbish and recycling.
But what does recycling mean? And what happens to all that packaging after you’ve binned it?
One school of thought is that an item isn’t truly recycled until it is turned into something else.
So how much recyclable material ends up back in the supermarket as a new product?
It seems we’re getting better at recycling – although it would be even better if manufacturers and retailers used packaging that didn’t need scissors, knives, secateurs, and teeth to rip, prise, and tear open.
Industry body, Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), reports that in 2022–23, packaging across all industries in Australia was, on average, made up of 44% recycled content.
But the recycled percentage varies between the different packaging materials.
ABC Science took three packaging products that are common and relatively easy to recycle – glass bottles, aluminium cans, and PET plastic bottles – to see just how much of each makes it through the system to begin a new life on supermarket shelves.
Aluminium cans have long been considered a valuable commodity by the recycling industry because the metal can be recycled repeatedly without degrading.
Did you know, about three-quarters of the aluminium ever produced is still in circulation today? But how much of a can sitting on an Australian supermarket shelf has been recycled? The amount changes depending on which can you buy.
APCO reports that aluminium packaging comprises, on average, 66% recycled content.
How does that compare with other countries? Well, Australia sits somewhere in the middle, according to Ben Madden, a University of Technology Sydney researcher focusing on resource recovery systems.
Crushed cans are melted down and rolled into sheets of recycled aluminium. About 20% of the sheets has been collected from recycling centres, while 47% comes from off-cuts or other aluminium that never left the factory.
The sheets are shaped into new products, like cans.
Like aluminium, glass is highly recyclable and doesn’t degrade.
APCO says the average amount of recycled content in glass packaging is 54%.
However, it is impossible to recycle 100% of the glass into new packaging. That’s because of contamination. Commingled recycling is a particular problem, because different coloured glass can break and mix together before it has been sorted.
Glass unsuitable for packaging is used in construction or other industries.
Most supermarket packaging uses some form of plastic, and it is much harder to recycle than aluminium and glass.
The plastic packaging type with by far the highest recycled content is polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
Once a PET bottle goes to a recycling plant, it’s turned into resin and transformed into new beverage bottles and other food-grade packaging.
APCO says uncoloured clear PET packaging comprises 33% recycled content – up from 14% in 2018-19.
That percentage is likely to increase again in the next few years, with new PET recycling plants opening around Australia.
While this type of plastic can be recycled many times in ideal conditions, it does degrade.
The number of times PET can be recycled depends on how the plastic is treated as it goes through the recycling system. It’s harder to keep the plastic placed in yellow bins in good condition because of contamination with other materials.
Overall, plastic packaging is made up of just 10% of recycled content. The hardest to recycle are soft plastics. They’re made of a wide variety of plastic types which are hard to separate.
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While recycling is getting better, the ABC says companies will still fall far short of the 2025 National Packaging Targets, including a 70% target for the amount of plastic packaging. In 2022–23, the industry reached 19%, which is a percentage point lower than the year before.
Dr Madden wants to see minimum packaging standard regulations that force companies away from the easier option of making plastics from fossil fuels.
Public consultation closed late last year on Australia’s packaging regulations reform, with a spokesperson for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water telling the ABC that the government will consider “a preferred regulatory option in 2025”.
APCO says the mandate will simplify recycling requirements for manufacturers by providing a comprehensive, nationwide set of standards, instead of the current situation, where each state has its own packaging design standards and requirements.
