THE war on waste is poised to scale up thousands of times over, with Hunter and Central Coast residents front and centre of plans to boost soft plastic recycling nationally.
To date, kerbside programs have operated alongside an Australia-wide effort to process mountains of stockpiled legacy soft plastic left behind after the collapse of REDcycle in 2022.
Four years on, operators have dealt with the last of that legacy material, lifting the lid on plant capacity to tackle some of the 580,000 tonnes of soft plastic placed on market in Australia every year.
The challenge has been to build enough capacity, nationally, to recycle and convert soft plastic into high-quality raw material, at scale.
That missing piece now exists, a stone's throw from the Hunter on the Mid North Coast, where an outfit that began on the Central Coast, iQRenew, has built the country's largest dedicated post-consumer soft plastics recycling facility.
It is ready to take up to 14,000 tonnes annually and is expected to increase its capacity to about 24,000 tonnes after its next expansion, around 2.5 times the annual processing capacity of the former national REDcycle program.
iQRenew CEO Danny Gallagher says that unlike previous systems, which relied heavily on export markets and limited domestic outlets, the new facility converts used household soft plastics into premium recycled resin suitable for making new packaging and durable Australian-made products, creating a genuine circular economy.
It will be fed, in part, by NSW's expanding existing kerbside soft plastic recycling program, Curby, which is diverting hundreds of tonnes of household plastic waste from landfill across participating local government areas, including Newcastle and the Central Coast.
Where previously, the number of participating households was effectively capped at about 2000 to ensure collected material was kept within processing limits, that is no longer a factor.
The majority was redirected to the iQRenew facility at Somersby, Mr Gallagher said, and that $26 million facility is now sitting idle after operating 18 hours a day, five and a half days a week.
Meanwhile, Soft Plastics Stewardship Australia (SPSA) has the green light from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to collect and recycle used soft plastic packaging, under a voluntary scheme, over the next eight years.
With the consumer watchdog's approval in place, SPSA is authorised to collect levies from brand owners, manufacturers, and retailers based on how much soft plastic they put on the market, and must report annually to help ensure the program's transparency.
The soft plastics stream will also be fed by material collected from supermarkets which have reintroduced return-to-store soft plastic collection. So far, more than 700 Woolworths stores, five Coles stores and 12 Aldi stores are on board.
While the return-to-store recycling program operates separately to Curby, residents can use Curby bags and tags when returning soft plastics for recycling at stores.
Woolworths, a major player in the space, is already using plastic collected through the scheme in its stores, after it is converted into products such as wall panelling and bread bags made with 30 per cent recycled plastic.
Australia Post has also bought in, teaming up with RM Williams and iQRenew and retailers to produce an AusPost circular satchel made of 100 per cent post consumer recycled soft plastic resin, which can be used and recycled over and over again.
The satchel is nominated for an award at the 2026 Australasian Packaging Innovation & Design awards being held in Melbourne on Tuesday.
The next phase, as IQ Renew joins forces with Curby, the SPSA, retailers and food chain giants, is to educate residents that they can, and should 'bag and bin' their soft plastics, Mr Gallagher said.
"People want to recycle," Mr Gallagher said.
"We have begun to rebuild the community's trust. Communication is key to encourage residents and help get the message out that we do have processing capability, the material is tracked from the store or your kerbside bin, through the facility, so they can have confidence that their efforts are being rewarded."
Newcastle and Central Coast residents can use Curby branded plastic bags, to fill and place in their yellow bins, or they can use Curby tags. Both options incorporate QR code technology for traceability.
Soft plastics put in yellow bins that are not bagged are destined for landfill, Mr Gallagher said.
The conveyor belt moves about four metres a second, which does not allow for individual pieces of soft plastic to be retrieved.
"Our recycling facilities process thousands of items every minute," Mr Gallagher said.
"Loose soft plastics simply cannot be identified and recovered from the normal recycling stream. By placing soft plastics into a Curby program bag, or attaching a Curby tag, our operators can immediately identify and recover the material before it enters the normal recycling process.
"It is a very simple change in behaviour that allows households to recycle material that would otherwise have gone to landfill."
The bagged and baled soft plastics leaving Somersby are processed, recycled and converted at the iQRenew Soft Plastic Engineered Commodity (SPEC) facility into recycled resin pellets used to manufacture the plastic film used to make the Australia post satchels, bin liners, bollards, fence posts, composting bins, bricks and pavers.
The purpose-built software sitting behind the Curby kerside program has had some teething issues, but they are being addressed, Mr Gallagher said.
A spokesman for Curby said the issue some residents have had with accessing the app (those who live within the Newcastle LGA but were being told their postcode could not participate) has been resolved.
The SPSA reports that there are now more than 150 councils whose residents want to join the 'bag-in-a-bin' kerbside program, setting the stage for a significant expansion of household soft plastics recycling through kerbside and return-to-store programs.
"The infrastructure is built," Mr Gallagher said.
"The technology has been proven. The opportunity belongs to every Australian household and importantly, Newcastle and Central Coast households can recycle soft plastics from home using Curby."
It comes ahead of key changes in the way green waste is managed, with a NSW government mandate that all households must have access to a kerbside food and garden organics (FOGO) service by 2030.
It is expected to start in Newcastle in mid-2027 for houses, duplexes, townhouses, and smaller unit complexes.
At the federal level, the Australian Greens have called on the government to implement mandatory plastic waste and recycling laws to replace voluntary targets and introduce Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) shifting responsibility for managing post-consumer plastic wastes back to the original manufacturers and brand owners.
At the end of June, the Australian Marine Conservation Society released the results of a poll which found 63 per cent of those polled want mandatory packaging laws to replace voluntary targets.
Nine in 10, or 89 per cent of voters think Australia should take action to limit its reliance on imported single-use plastic packaging, and 62 per cent support the companies that produce and sell packaged products being responsible for their packaging waste, including the cost of collection and disposal, the research found.
