packaging recovery final gm

Packaging Recycling: Current and future trends

Grant Musgrove ACORE-mail: grantm@acor.org.au

About ACOR• Formed in 1983

• A national peak representative body for the recycling and resource recovery industry –any organisation can join, only one LGA which is odd

• Our core business

o Lobbying governments for policies and regulations that support organisations in the recycling and resource recovery industry

o Advising our members on what’s going to happen next!

• >80% of all recycling activity

• >30 million tonnes p.a.

• 40,000+ jobs and growing

grantm@acor.org.au

Key barriers to increasing recovery and recycling of packaging1. Packaging design

2. Manufacturer’s resistance

3. Lack of supply chain alignment

4. Lack of investment/ infrastructure

5. Landfill costs

6. Uncertainties of regulatory standards

7. Regulatory failures

8. Increasing complexity of packaging

9. Increasingly packaging is not recyclable/recoverable

10. Lack of end-of-life markets/ price

grantm@acor.org.au

The “old” waste hierarchy

• This is linear, not circular, but a useful intermediate /transitional framework

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Current direction of packaging design trends

Life

Cycle

Assessment

(LCA)

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Current direction of packaging resource recovery trends

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Unnecessary complexity

Age of new materials

Institutional Change

Circular e

conomy

Technological change uneven

Packaging

Recycling

Technological developments

Time

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Regulatory trends

Externalities being internalised

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Regulatory creep/ trends

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Design for recovery

• Material information

• Progressive reduction of contaminants

• More effective sorting

• Easy dismantling – not using multiple polymers or mixing different

types of materials that cannot be separated

consumers cannot make a mistake

if there are no mistake to be made

grantm@acor.org.au

Future trends – International context

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Future packaging resource recovery trends – International context

• In 2009 China passed new law to form a Circular Economy

• Major strategic importance – if successful will set a new level for global competitiveness

• Part of the law is a Packaging Master Plan comprising of legislation that will restrict, recover, recycle and reuse all packaging materials.

• “Green Wall/Fence/hedgerow- in Chinglish • Contaminated plastic imports being stopped by customs

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A Time Bomb by 2025..

+47%

Old Style Contemporary packaging

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Future pathway of packaging waste? Sustainability of current system?

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1999-00

2000-01

2001-02

2002-03

2003-04

2004-05

2005-06

2006-07

2007-08

2008-09

2009-10

2010-11

2011-12

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

Waste Exports

PaperGlassPlastics

In $

mill

ion

Big Changes

• Price volatility+ divergence + scarcity • Just the beginning, as developing countries deal

with their own packaging time bombs• Need for local reprocessing infrastructure support

from government• Made to be made again, design for recovery/ M&A

of supply chain• Deployment of information technology • Policy/ regulatory agenda change for a circular

materials economy

grantm@acor.org.au

ACOR

ACOR will continue to advise our members and governments and our members on

these transformations

grantm@acor.org.au