The announcement made by Australian environment ministers regarding the implementation of strict new rules for packaging is a commendable and significant step in the right direction to tackle plastic pollution.

Mandating producer responsibility and making industry responsible for the packaging they place on the market sets a remarkable precedent as it is the first of its kind in Australia, demonstrating the government's commitment to addressing the pressing issue of waste and boosting recycling efforts.

Any move towards safer and sustainable packaging is unquestionably a step in the right direction. A move towards circular economy is not without its challenges and it will take some time to develop and be implemented. Reuse is certainly more desirable than recycling. Recycling has several challenges, for example around labelling and hazardous chemicals amongst others. Moving to a circular model is designed to reduce total plastic in the global system and deliver better environmental and health outcomes. However, even with increased reuse and recycling, leakage to the environment will still occur for the foreseeable future; for example, via shedding of tyre particles or clothing fibres. I really hope that this is just the start of Australia stepping up to be a global leader in the transition to safe and sustainable plastics.

Achieving any broadscale shifts in established practice through voluntary change is challenging. Australia’s packaging industry has implemented many valuable changes under the Packaging Covenant, including developing a new Framework of Packaging Sustainability, implementing an industry-wide system to assess and improve the recyclability of packaging, implementing an on-pack recyclability label, developing an action plan to phase out PFAS, supporting research around reusable packaging and compostable food packaging.

However, the barriers to system transformations such as required for packaging are substantial, and many are external to individual businesses and industries. These include safety regulation, the need to preserve food and reduce food waste, differences in recycling eligibility rules across and within Australia’s states and territories and entrenched consumer preferences and habits. Overcoming such systemic barriers takes significant time, effort and coordination.

Regulation and mandatory requirements have been shown to be effective in speeding up such transitions, by ensuring, for example, that expectations are clear, all players are working towards the same outcomes, and free riding is limited. Minimum design standards and extended producer responsibility are both utilised internationally, including in the UK and Europe, and it is a great sign to see Australia now beginning to adopt such approaches in our transition to a circular economy.

Nonetheless, care will be needed to ensure the regulations and their timing are appropriate to the context, and don’t leave the entirety of responsibility of overcoming the system barriers on any one industry. Particularly, it will be critical to ensure that such regulation are accompanied by other policy support that address the major challenges facing the industry. This should include, for example, a timeline for introducing mandatory minimum recycled content targets in federal and state government procurement in line with the announced design standards, which will increase the ‘demand side’ on the equation in line with these new ‘supply side’ requirements.

Plastic production is expected to double by 2040. This is unsustainable. Our throwaway culture sends millions of tonnes of plastic waste to landfill every year.

Plastic packaging is the most prevalent type of plastic pollution. We need to look at solutions that address the entire plastic supply chain. This will help turn plastic waste into a resource.
 
Changing behaviour and our throwaway culture plays a significant part; we need to apply the: avoid, reuse and recycle approach for single-use plastics. 25% of plastic packaging is still being designed in a way that cannot be recycled or has poor recyclability – this needs to change.
 
We know one of the key barriers to recycling plastics includes the difficulties of separating multiple polymers that may be within the same item.  For example, a plastic bottle may contain one type of plastic in the bottle, another in the lid and yet another in the label. The simplification of the number of polymer types would increase the ease of recycling and therefore retain the value from plastics, and increase circularity.
 
Standards will help us to achieve targets, and recent work has demonstrated that Australian citizens are willing to do their part and want to do the right thing, the easier we make it for them to do so, the higher compliance we will see.
 
Advanced recycling technologies could help tackle hard-to-recycle flexible plastics that currently end up in landfill.  Biodegradable and compostable solutions offer an alternative to petroleum-based plastics. These replacements currently only make up 1% of plastic consumption but offer new commercialisation opportunities to support Australia’s economy.

This is one step closure to cutting plastic waste in Australia; rules around mandatory packaging design standards will enable benign design. However, mandating recycled plastics contradicts existing scientific evidence; our research and European research have shown that recycled plastics contain more than 100 different toxic chemicals, and concentrations are far higher than in virgin plastics. Our results showed that contaminants can be accumulated in recycled products at elevated levels through different pathways. Selecting the sectors to use recycled products necessitates prioritizing their future risk. Therefore, we can’t avoid harmful chemicals in food packaging if we encourage recycled plastics. Cutting waste is a good thing but boosting recycling is not necessarily.

Ban plastics is my solution to all plastic issues. It’s a toxic waste problem, not a waste management problem. Banning is necessary and the world is not getting to terms with that." (see this paper)

This announcement is a step in the right direction. The inclusion of recycled contents into new plastic products helps to generate the climate for investment into the circular economy. 

It is important that such changes are mandated, so clear market parameters are created, delivering market certainty and enabling the uptake of new technology to facilitate a more sustainable economy.

The opportunity is tremendous with something like 3 million tonnes of plastic waste being created every year in Australia. Waste is complex, and a multiparameter approach is needed – a possible vision of returning 50% of plastic waste back into the circular economy by chemical recycling and 20 to 30% by mechanical recycling with the intractable remainder being burnt to generate heat would be a world-leading outcome. 

Such an outcome is made more likely by this announcement.

With Licella Holding’s Cat-HTR technology, Australia has a homegrown global-first technology for the chemical upcycling mixed end of life waste plastics. 

This government announcement further supports the emerging industry and allows the waste problem to be transformed into an opportunity by retaining the material in the circular supply chain, by giving value to what once was simply worthless waste.

Responsible packaging is core to product stewardship. According to the Environment Defence Fund more than 9.2 billion tons of packaging are produced across the globe and less than 10 percent of it gets recycled. Responsible packaging involves using materials and practices that are designed to minimize environmental impact. The announcement on mandatory obligations on packaging design and producer responsibility for packaging, are steps in the right direction.

Currently, excessive packaging is becoming the norm and gaining (often unwarranted) associations with product quality (e.g., packaged products are assumed to be safer and of higher quality) and with luxury (e.g., expensive clothes are often wrapped in layers of tissue before being put in a bag). More than 90 percent of packaging ends up in landfill. With the proposed legislation producers will be forced to think about where is packaging really required, and how to deal with the packaging they place on the market. Any attempt at reducing unnecessary and wasteful packaging will reduce waste, conserve resources, save energy, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and decrease land, air and marine pollution. The benefits are immense!

The legislation will also motivate producers to engage more actively with solutions that already exist in the market, such as factoring in minimalism design (i.e., do we really need the layers and layers of plastic packaging); exploring biodegradable and compostable packaging; increasing recycled content in packaging; and carrying out life cycle assessment of packaging.

It is great to hear the announcement by Minister Plibersek today, and encouraging to see that the current government is taking seriously the enormous challenge that we face as a country, and world when it comes to waste management from packaging. Finally, the government appears to be listening to the experts that have been advocating for these changes. However, while this announcement is positive, a lot of work needs to be done to figure out what chemicals are considered 'harmful', and to what extent. Australia is notoriously deficient in regards to what we know about harmful chemicals, the toxicological risk assessment process, and how we regulate those chemicals. 

While the particulars around exactly how the mandates will work are still unclear, one thing is for certain: well all need to be taking a hard stance to reduce our waste. Australia is in a dire waste predicament, with many landfills almost full, and few alternatives currently available to manage waste into the future, including plastic. Mandates and regulations at the production end of the spectrum are critical to help reduce the waste input, but equally important is the role that we all play as individuals and consumers to change our consumption habits. Only by working together can we ever expect to combat the waste management crisis we are currently facing.