The Australian Packaging Covenant (APC) has taken a share of the credit for an increase in the country's recycling rate for post consumer packaging.
Announcing 2012 packaging recycling figures for the country, the APC said the overall recycling rate for post-consumer packaging in Australia of 63.8 per cent last year was achieved partly on the back of collaborative product stewardship actions introduced under the covenant.
The rate was well up on the 39 per cent baseline recycling rate established in 2003, and meant the country was well on the way to achieving the 70 per cent recycling rate the APC is targeting by 2015.
APC chief executive Stan Moore said his organisation had played a key role in achieving the latest figures. He said APC-funded projects had accounted for up to 32.4 per cent of the overall increase in recycling tonnes from 2005-2012.
“We are pleased to see the recycling rate continue to increase overall despite the difficult trading conditions,” he said. “The Australian Packaging Covenant has a number of key projects in the pipeline and would expect these to start contributing to future increases.”
The figures showed an increase in tonnes of recycling materials for all but one packaging category.
The recycling rate for paperboard packaging achieved a new record level of 76.8 per cent, a 1.5 per cent increase from last year and up by five per cent since the stronger market prior to the Global Financial Crisis.
The plastic packaging recycling rate, meanwhile, achieved a world-leading figure of 41.5 per cent, an increase of 7.8 per cent over 2011.
The APC said this was achieved by a decrease in the consumption of plastic packaging by 2.3 per cent over the previous year, as well as the implementation of sustainable design considerations such as light-weighting.
A decline in consumption of aluminium cans, by 7.5 per cent, contributed to an improved recovery rate of such cans to 67.3 per cent. In terms of steel cans, a decline in consumption of such containers helped increase the recovery rate by 4.7 per cent to 38.9 per cent. While the demand for steel packaging from the food sector was been relatively stable, the APC said it believed that adverse weather conditions may have been a factor in decreased consumption as there has been less steel required for the packaging of local produce.
These results were offset partly, however, by a decrease in the glass recycling rate by approximately two per cent over the past year.
The Australian Packaging Covenant says latest research figures show an increase in recycling of most packaging materials in Australia.
