Page 29 - Packaging News magazine March-April 2022

March-April 2022 | www.packagingnews.com.au
| BEVERAGE PACKAGING 29
industry indicate to us that only the oldest of material recovery facilities (MRFs) do not have the necessary equipment to process caps. We are greatly encouraged by multiple govern- ments’ dedication to investing in waste infrastructure. If the newly announced MRF in Katherine, Northern Territory is any indication, we will quickly find this processing issue disappear.
Although unable to be made into new bottle caps with current technolo- gies, caps (or closures) are nevertheless a high-value material which can be remade into a variety of value-added products such as wheelchairs, wheelie bins and bollards. Economics aside, from a litter reduction and resource recovery perspective, universal col- lection of caps is essential to ensuring our industry remains at the forefront of responsible environmental steward- ship. We invite members of the food and beverage ecosystem to speak to your local stakeholders and take a unified stance that encourages har- monised caps collection nationwide across CDS and kerbside.
CONSUMER PARTICIPATION
Our second, and just as important, key initiative to improve consumer par- ticipation in recycling is harmonising consumer messaging under a hybrid CDS/ARL recycling logo. Our indus- try stands apart from others in that it enters the Australian Packaging Covenant with an already established mandated producer responsibility scheme in most jurisdictions, with the entire country to be covered by a CDS by 2023. The combined logo
proposed by APCO at the end of 2021 contains all the necessary informa- tion to ensure containers make it into both programs in a format that is easy to understand and action.
The ABCL invites APCO and all the readers of this piece to join us in requesting jurisdictions to nationally harmonise to recognise the CDS/ARL logo as an accepted alternative to the 10-cent wording currently mandated in CDS regulations nationwide. From a labelling perspective, this is the best way our industry can ensure we play our part in reaching the National Packaging Targets and the National Plastics Plan goal of 80 per cent of supermarket items displaying the ARL on pack by the end of 2023.
Finally, ABCL and the beverages industry have an ambitious vision for what CDS can look like into the future.
We fear this confusion about recycling and recyclability is endemic across the country.”
Geoff Parker, ABCL CEO
Food, beverage, and FMCG products increasingly speak the same language when it comes to utilising rigid plas- tics for our products. The push to make all packaging reusable, recy- clable or compostable by 2025 means that many packaging formats are tran- sitioning to the common plastics we use every day, mainly PET, HDPE and PP. Along with glass and aluminium, which many different products now use, most plastic container packaging can be recovered and recycled through CDS. We encourage governments and other sectors of the shopping trolley to consider expanding the scope of CDS to include these products, to ensure we capture the most materials possible to facilitate a robust, domestic-based circular economy.
From a beverage industry perspec- tive, there is truly no time to waste. ■