The Australian Council of Recycling (ACOR) is urging the Federal Government to swiftly implement packaging reforms, warning that failure could collapse Australia’s plastic recycling sector and leave millions of tons of plastic waste to keep polluting the environment nationwide. ACOR says Australia consumes more than 1.3 million tons of plastic packaging annually, most of it imported, yet over a million tons still end up in landfill or as litter.
The Council said that while Australian recyclers have the capacity to process recyclable plastics, weak demand for locally recycled packaging is forcing facilities to scale back or risk closure, leading to more plastic waste, increased reliance on imports, job losses, and worsening climate impacts. An economic analysis by Rennie Advisory for ACOR and the Australian Packaging Covenant Organization (APCO) found that reforms requiring all packaging to meet strict design standards, including recycled content, and be recyclable or reusable, would help build a stronger, cleaner, and more self-reliant economy. It would also provide Australian businesses with the certainty needed to continue investing in packaging that meets best-practice design standards.
The analysis, outlined in the Securing Australia’s Plastic Recycling Future report, found that introducing a fee-based Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme would place responsibility on brand owners for the end-of-life management of their plastic packaging, while having only a very small impact on overall costs. The modelling showed the scheme would increase product prices by just 0.1 per cent, making it a low-cost measure with the potential to deliver significant environmental and economic benefits.
ACOR stated that, if carefully designed, such a scheme would create a fair and balanced system, recognizing and rewarding companies that have already invested in high-quality, sustainable packaging, while encouraging other businesses to improve their practices to meet the same standards.
If implemented within the current term of Government, the analysis found that packaging reforms could deliver the following benefits over the next five years:
23 January 2026
23 January 2026
23 January 2026
23 January 2026