What to do with soft plastics?
Take your soft plastics to the Transfer station!
Geoffrey Murray, MRSG committee member and EO of the local Victorian Regional Recyclers, is conducting a trial with the Macedon Ranges Shire Council in the recycling of soft plastics. The following is from the Council’s press release.
What are soft plastics?
Soft plastics are plastics that can be scrunched in your hand and bounce back to their original shape or flexible films such as bubble wrap or cling wrap.
Soft plastics cannot be recycled through the commingled kerbside recycling bin (yellow lid) as they can get stuck in the trucks and sorting machinery. Soft plastics can be recycled through specialist recycling services.
A recent audit of kerbside general waste bins (red or dark green lid bin) showed that up to 70% of the general waste was soft plastics. If a household wishes to reduce their household waste and recycle more, they can do so by collecting their soft plastics in a bag and dropping them at a Transfer Station.
Accepted Items
All items free for Macedon Ranges Shire residents and businesses.
Please ensure all plastics are completely dry and free of food and other products. Plastic bags
Plastic carry bags
Bulk bags. Such as: rice bags
Reusable shopping bags ‘green bags’ (polypropylene)
Netting produce bags (metal clips removed)
Pet food and stock feed bags. Such as: dry pet food bags, chaff/horse/chicken feed (plastic and woven polypropylene)
Zip lock and snap lock bags
Plastic Films
Bubble wrap
Cling wrap
Documents sleeves (white reinforcement strip removed)
Large sheets of plastic furniture wrap
Pallet wrap
Plastic film from grocery items. Such as: toilet paper and disposable nappies. ∙ Shrink wrap
Other items
Bread bag tags (collected separately in a clear plastic bag)
Plastic bottle caps (collected separately in a clear plastic bag)
What items are not accepted?
Any soft plastic item that is not listed above.
At this stage some soft plastics for example silver lined chip and snack wrappers are not yet accepted. We hope to expand the service and add more items to the list soon.
For any soft plastic item that cannot be accepted at Transfer Stations, check your local supermarket RedCycle collection.
Check out our waste A-Z guide on our website or the MRSC waste app for a comprehensive list of waste items or contact Customer Service on (03) 5422 0333
or mrsc@mrsc.vic.gov.au with your query.
What happens to the soft plastics?
Council is running a six month trial with a local recycling company called Victorian Regional Recyclers.
Once your soft plastics are collected from the Transfer Station, the different types of plastics are sorted and processed where they are then sent to local end markets to be recycled in to new items in Australia.
If the trial is successful, Council hopes to introduce this as an ongoing service to support the community’s passion for recycling and a big step in our goals for reducing waste to landfill.
