Chemistry Australia has a vision of an Australian Plastics Circular Economy.
The linear use of plastics, including a lack of waste management capability, has created environmental and other problems that a circular economy will help solve.
The Australian chemistry and plastics sector is a key solution provider of the materials, products, technologies and talent that enables sustainable solutions to be delivered at the scale required. Without this domestic capability, achieving Australia’s National Plastics Plan targets will be limited.
A circular economy prioritises resource conservation and efficiency, design innovations that enable longer product lifespans, and reuse, recovery and recycling technologies that transform waste products into high value resources, allowing society to capture the greatest value from materials that have traditionally been discarded.
UN Sustainable Development Goals
A more circular stewardship approach to plastic materials and products will help achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Australian Plastics recycling targets.
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Australian plastics circular economy
Chemistry Australia and its members are committed to the transition from a linear to a circular economy for plastic materials and products which requires:
- Design for re-useability, recyclability and compostability
- Eliminating plastic pellet loss to the environment from the entire supply chain
- Product and market development that create demand for re-usability and recycled content
- Standardised collection, sorting and cleaning infrastructure for quality, clean plastic stream feedstock at scale
- A suite of recycling technologies able to transform used products back into high value resources
- Research, development and piloting of solutions to deliver technology platforms and market volumes
- Specifications and standards to verify raw material feedstocks and recycling outputs, and the recycled content of products
- Conformance of imported materials and products to meet Australian specifications including APCO targets, and
- Nationally consistent and reliable data systems to measure performance and inform decisions.
A strong, sustainable Australian chemicals and plastics sector, domestic manufacturing sector, recovery and recycling sectors, and industry-focused research are critical to delivering solutions, at the required scale, to enable and drive the transition to the plastics circular economy.
These need to be supported by enabling policy that encourages investment in scalable domestic solutions and does not disadvantage domestic industry given the large importation of finished goods.
Chemistry Australia supports the National Waste Policy Action Plan and the National Plastics Plan providing a structured and coordinated national approach to improving circular outcomes.
Download a copy of our Plastics Circular Economy paper here.
For more information about advanced recycling and CSIRO's report on advanced recycling technologies, visit our Advanced plastics recycling page.
