As Australia pursues packaging reform, the role packaging plays in protecting food supply chains cannot be overlooked. Circularity policy and food security strategy must be aligned – not treated as separate agendas.
Australian industry has shown strong ambition in packaging reform. Across the packaging value chain, businesses have invested in innovation, pursued voluntary commitments, and worked to meet rising expectations around circularity and sustainability. Yet despite these efforts, progress has stalled – not because of a lack of will, but because the system itself cannot deliver what is now being asked of it.
There is also a striking disconnect at national policy level. While Australia pursues ambitious circular packaging reforms, the government is simultaneously developing a national food security strategy, Feeding Australia, aimed at strengthening long-term food supply. Packaging is a foundational part of that system, enabling safety, resilience and access, particularly across long distances and challenging climates.
A future-focused packaging strategy cannot ignore the relationship between packaging functionality and food security. The two agendas must be aligned, not treated in isolation.
Food security must be part of the packaging conversation
If Australia wants to ensure secure food supply chains, minimise food loss and enable efficient distribution, packaging performance must be considered alongside recycling outcomes.
This intersection becomes unavoidable when viewed through the lens of food as a human right – a framing increasingly reflected in policy settings, with dignity in access as a core value. Packaging is not simply a waste issue. It is an enabling component of the food system, essential for shelf life, safety and reducing food loss.
Consider ambient (aseptic) packaging, which is critical to the export dairy value chain. Without it, products such as milk cannot reach international markets safely or viably, eroding export revenue and weakening agrifood supply chain resilience. Ambient formats underpin long-distance stability, market access and competitiveness – economic and trade imperatives that cannot be dismissed in pursuit of recycling targets alone.
Policy must move beyond end-of-life thinking
Current policy settings remain heavily focused on end-of-life management – whether packaging can be collected, sorted or reprocessed. While essential, this narrow lens overlooks important considerations such as full life cycle environmental impacts, packaging functionality and food protection, the carbon footprint of materials, and system-wide circularity outcomes.
If Australia is serious about reducing environmental impact, policy must remain open to new materials and innovations rather than confining the conversation solely to recyclability. Recyclability matters, but it is not the only sustainability metric.
Renewable materials, low-carbon substrates, smart barrier technologies and packaging that extends food life all play important roles in reducing overall environmental impact. A future-fit system should encourage, not limit, these innovations.
System barriers are the real constraint
As Chris Foley, CEO of the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), recently noted, several persistent barriers continue to undermine progress: unfavourable economics, inconsistent definitions and enforcement across jurisdictions, and insufficient recovery capability. These are not problems industry can solve alone. They are structural deficiencies requiring coordinated policy intervention.
These gaps also limit Australia’s ability to transition away from plastics where appropriate. Even when industry is ready to move to alternative materials, the enabling system – collection pathways, reprocessing technologies and national standards – is not yet capable of supporting them at scale.
Minimising plastic use globally will only be achievable if the system evolves to accommodate a broader portfolio of sustainable materials.
APCO’s role, as Foley describes it, is to translate “policy ambition and operational reality”. But that translation becomes impossible when policy frameworks themselves are misaligned with the complexity of the challenge. Without nationally consistent standards, enforceable compliance mechanisms and investment in infrastructure, even the most committed businesses are left navigating a fragmented landscape that can reward inaction as much as innovation.
The reality is stark. Industry can continue operating within the current framework, but that framework is not capable of delivering the transformation we have collectively committed to. The status quo supports existing operations, but it cannot unlock the higher levels of circularity, recovery or material innovation required to meet our targets.
Ambition without systemic change has reached its limit.
Government leadership is essential
To translate calls for practical, enforceable packaging reform into real outcomes, Australia needs:
- nationally consistent, enforceable packaging standards
- a co-regulatory framework that incentivises investment and penalises non-compliance
- greater alignment between environment, industry and food policy portfolios
- accelerated investment in recovery and reprocessing infrastructure; and
- system-wide sustainability criteria that go beyond recyclability alone.
Industry has shown it is ready to invest, innovate and adapt. But without clear national policy settings and coordinated infrastructure development, those efforts will remain constrained by a system not designed to support the transition.
Australia has reached a point where ambition alone is no longer enough. If packaging reform is to deliver both circularity and resilient food supply chains, government leadership must now provide the framework that enables the system to evolve.
