Recycling of household soft plastics will soon be part of the usual weekly kerbside waste collection across the Central Coast, following Council’s successful trial program which saw 11,000kg diverted from landfill.
Central Coast is the first Council in Australia to support a kerbside soft plastic recycling program to households.
Council teamed up with iQRenew and CurbCycle in November 2020, involving 2500 residents in a trial which resulted in close to two million plastic bags being diverted from landfill.
Council Director Infrastructure Services, Boris Bolgoff, said soft plastics contributed to a large portion of the household waste being sent to landfill on the Central Coast and could cause significant damage to the environment and marine life.
“Throughout the pilot program, participating households diverted more than 10 tonnes of soft plastics from landfill – that’s the equivalent of close to two million plastic bags,” he said.
“We are looking forward to opening up this program to all households across the Coast so we can continue to avoid the negative environmental impacts of soft plastics,” Bolgoff said.
Administator Rik Hart said Council was helping to shape the future of soft plastics recycling nationally.
“I encourage all households to opt-in to the program, which is helping to cement the Central Coast as a leading region in sustainability innovation,” he said.
To participate in soft plastics recycling, download the Curby App and register your household online.
A CurbyPack will be sent out which includes special bags and tags which can then be placed inside the yellow lid recycling bin for weekly collection.
Under the Curby program, the soft plastics will be separated from other recycling at iQRenew’s Materials Recovery Facility and processed in a purpose-built Soft Plastics Engineered Commodity facility that is being developed on the Central Coast.
The soft plastics will then be re-processed into specific high purity plastic feedstocks for various industries such as the recent trial which saw Nestle use recycled plastic to make KitKat wrappers.
Soft plastics are the kind that can be scrunched into a ball; outer wrappers on chocolate, biscuits, icecream and snacks; confectionary, cracker and chip packets (silver lined); plastic liners, bubble and cling wraps, snap lock/zip lock bags; wrappers on vegetables or fresh and frozen food; document sleeves, plastic post satchels and carrier bags; cellophane, newspaper and magazine wraps; plastic bags; cereal box liners; plastic pet food bags, clean potting mix and compost bags; fresh produce bags and netting produce bags (any metal clips removed).
Sue Murray
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