Soft plastic recycling is returning to select Inner West supermarkets following advocacy from Inner West Council, demand from the local community and strong support from Woolworths.
Woolworths has announced in-store soft plastics collections is now available at stores in Balmain, Ashfield Mall and North Ashfield (Bland Street), with other stores in Leichhardt and Marrickville to follow in the coming months.
This follows the sustained action of Inner West Council on soft plastics recycling, including expanding door-to-door household soft plastics collections, continued advocacy to supermarkets to bring back in-store collections, and ongoing work to amend Council's procurement policy to use soft plastic aggregate in local projects like road building, construction, soft-fall and street furniture.
The Woolworths collection points will allow residents to responsibly dispose of soft plastic packaging, which cannot be placed in household recycling bins. The soft plastics are then recycled at a facility in Warragamba and transformed into a high-quality building product, which can be used to replaced less sustainable materials such as plywood, plasterboard and tiles.
Inner West Deputy Mayor Mat Howard welcomed the trial as a significant step forward in addressing the soft plastics crisis and calls on other major retailers to follow suit.
"This is a big win for our Inner West community, who wants to see soft plastics properly disposed of and recycled," the Deputy Mayor said.
"We thank Woolworths for working with us to make soft plastics recycling accessible once again."
The initiative comes after the collapse of the REDcycle program in 2022, which left residents across the country without a viable soft plastics recycling option.
"We know people were stockpiling soft plastics at home, waiting for a solution. This is a great start — but it's only the beginning," the Deputy Mayor added. "We'll continue to advocate for broader industry responsibility and permanent solutions to plastic waste."
"We are proud to be taking the lead in the actively reducing soft plastic pollution and will continue to fight for an expansion of recycling here in Australia and a reduction in the use of polluting plastics."
