The government has thrown more cash at Australia's capacity to recycle difficult plastics after the spectacular collapse of the REDcycle scheme.
Three projects in Victoria will together divert more than 43,000 tonnes of soft plastic from landfill each year, with the help of $15.6 million from a fund to modernise recycling across the country.
Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek says boosting recycling capacity is vital but the war on waste will largely come down to better packaging design.
"Year after year we've been using more and more plastic. We need to change that trend to be using less virgin material and more recycled content," she said at one project site in Melbourne in Tuesday.
"That's why we're working with industry on tough new packaging laws that will mandate the share of recycled content, that will look at the design of packaging in the first place."
Work is also underway with major supermarkets, and with the states and territories and local governments to boost collection rates of soft plastics in stores and at the kerbside.
"We're never really going to get on top of this soft plastics issue until we get broader collection of soft plastics," the minister said.
Australia's packaging industry is facing a raft of mandatory reforms after admitting voluntary efforts to meet four waste-busting targets would fail.
Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation is the peak industry body for the packaging sector and was tasked with delivering those targets by 2025.
Earlier this month, the organisation said it had a new plan to help boost recycling and reduce the use of problematic types of packaging.
It said membership fees would be changed from mid-2027, with those who produce more waste, and continue to use problematic types of waste, to pay more.
It said the funds raised would be used to overcome economic barriers that have hindered progress on the national targets.
Cash will be directed at supporting end markets, reprocessing infrastructure and creating better collection systems.
Australia has never had a soft plastics scheme capable of recycling anything like the volume of the waste stream that's produced.
It said membership fees would be changed from mid-2027, with those who produce more waste, and continue to use problematic types of waste, to pay more.
It said the funds raised would be used to overcome economic barriers that have hindered progress on the national targets.
Cash will be directed at supporting end markets, reprocessing infrastructure and creating better collection systems.
Australia has never had a soft plastics scheme capable of recycling anything like the volume of the waste stream that's produced.
The only scheme the country has had was the now defunct REDcycle program, which was privately run with no oversight by the government.
It's collapse in late 2022 led to the startling revelation that the soft plastics consumers had been dutifully returning to supermarkets for recycling had in fact been secretly stockpiled at warehouses across the nation.
In all more than 12,000 tonnes of the stuff was found leaving an enormous mess for the supermarkets to clean up.
REDcycle was a for-profit scheme run by a self-described "team of seven mums".
In July last year, Victoria's Environment Protection Authority dropped the charges it had laid against the scheme's operator, RG Programs and Services.
The move followed the appointment of liquidators.
The operator has long denied there was any cover up, saying it was holding on to the waste while trying to ride out problems including a lack of recycling capacity in Australia.
