Where does the increased household waste go during the holiday season?

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In 2022, Little Big Dairy, based in the NSW regional city of Dubbo, decided to switch its milk bottle caps from blue to clear.

It may sound like a minor change, but it’s one aimed at tackling a major issue: plastic pollution.

“The name Little Big Dairy comes from a saying from my grandfather that if you take care of the little things, the big things will take care of themselves,” says Campbell Chesworth, who oversees the company’s business operations.

Campbell Chesworth oversees business operations at Little Big Dairy.

He explains using a clear lid makes the bottle much easier to process at a recycling facility because coloured bottle caps can contaminate plastic recycling.

“Having the clear lid removes the pigment that often a dark blue bottle cap on a milk bottle will have. That means the whole bottle can be turned back into clear plastic.”

It’s among a series of steps the business is taking to embrace sustainable packaging.

Little Big Dairy also offers ‘bladder bags’ — a large storage bag that can hold up to 10 litres of milk — to cafe clients as a way to reduce packaging.

“It does away with five plastic bottles, lids and labels,” Chesworth says.

A white man holds a soft clear plastic bag filled with milk. It has a nozzle on it with a blue cap.

One of Little Big Dairy’s ‘bladder bags’. Source: SBS News / Abbie O’Brien

2025 National Packaging Targets

Little Big Dairy’s packaging changes are in line with Australia’s national packaging targets set in 2018 following extensive government and industry consultation.

The targets are part of a sweeping plan aimed at reducing the amount of packaging waste that ends up in landfill and are due to be fully implemented this year.

Australia’s 2025 National Packaging Targets

But almost eight years on and with the deadline looming it has become clear the goals are out of reach.

Chris Foley, the CEO of Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO) — the not-for-profit group tasked with coordinating the 2025 National Targets — says there are a few factors at play.

“Admittedly, there are a number of our members who need to do more with their packaging. It needs to be more recyclable and reusable. But equally, the materials that they’re putting into the market and the packaging they put on market needs to be collected. And at the moment, some of that packaging isn’t worth collecting. There’s an economic gap,” he says.

“That’s one of the big challenges — the system’s not working. It should be able to collect and recycle and move it back into a circular economy.”

A two litre bottle of milk with a clear cap

Little Big Dairy has switched its milk bottle caps from blue to clear.

Jennifer Macklin from Monash University’s Sustainable Development Institute says the goals were always “ambitious”.

“If you think about taking the multitudes of different types of packaging — packaging on your household food and groceries from a supermarket, packaging on what businesses receive or even packages in the health and medical sectors — it’s used across our entire economy,” Macklin says.

“That’s a huge shift to make in seven years to change how that packaging is designed [and] what it’s made from in order to be a hundred per cent recyclable.”

So how are we tracking?

Currently, 86 per cent of all packaging in Australia is able to be recycled, according to the latest figures, released in December.

That’s not too far off the goal of 100 per cent.

But Macklin says just because a product can be recycled doesn’t guarantee it will be.

“We’re seeing gaps in both the [percentage] of packaging that is actually recyclable and the amount of recycled content that’s going into packaging in certain sectors [and] in certain material types.”

However, Australia is making progress towards its recycled content target of 50 per cent.

Recycled content is the proportion of recycled materials in packaging by weight. The figure now sits at 40 per cent.

Paper, metal and glass are performing well, but plastic is not.

Plastic not fantastic

Currently, around 10 per cent of plastic packaging contains recycled content, and only 19 per cent of all plastic packaging is recycled, according to the latest figures, despite a target of 70 per cent.

“Plastic is unique in having a collection of different types of plastic — so different types of polymers — and those different types of polymers provide different packaging functionality,” Macklin explains.

“That’s why sometimes multiple types of plastic are put into the same piece of packaging. They provide different functions. When we want to recycle [them], it works best if we can separate them back out into those different types of polymers.”

The latest results of the 2025 National Packaging Targets

That’s where it gets tricky, she says.

“Different manufacturers might choose to make shampoo bottles out of different types of plastic. So you can’t even just say, ‘well, all shampoo bottles belong in this category of plastic and all plastic milk bottles belong in this category of plastic’. So it’s got that real difficulty just at almost the chemistry level.”

Soft plastics are particularly challenging.

And Chris Foley from APCO says Australia lacks the infrastructure to recycle soft plastic effectively.

“There are technical challenges to recycling it and, in an Australian context, the manufacturing capabilities of the country aren’t there to reprocess domestically in a chemical context where you’d be bringing it back in as a recycled plastic film.”

A man in a suit and wearing glasses standing in front of shelving holding various plastic containers. He is holding a red bag of lollies

Chris Foley says the vast majority of rigid plastic packaging used in Australian households is designed to be recycled, but it’s not. Source: SBS News / Abbie O’Brien

Australia’s major soft-plastic recycling scheme collapsed in 2022 after it was revealed , instead of being recycled.

Foley says rigid plastics, while easier to recycle, are not being sorted properly by households.

“We know that 70 per cent of rigid plastic packaging that leaves the household is actually designed to be recycled, but it’s not. Unfortunately, households aren’t putting it in the right bin,” Foley says.

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Calls for a plastic packaging tax

But there has been some progress, with certain problematic and single-use plastics having been largely removed from Australian packaging. Some 31,000 tonnes of single-use HDPE shopping bags have been almost entirely eliminated, according to APCO.

Paper and paperboard now represent over 50 per cent of all packaging placed on the market and have a high recovery rate of 73 per cent.

But APCO acknowledges there is more work to be done, with 1.3 million tonnes of this “valuable material” ending up in landfill.

Research published by the Australia Institute in January 2024 found a European Union-style tax on plastic packaging could raise nearly $1.5 billion each year.

“We’re recovering less than a fifth of the plastic waste used each year, with consumption expected to more than double to nearly 10 billion tonnes by 2050,” Nina Gbor, director of the Australia Institute’s Circular Economy & Waste Program, said at the time.

“Unless we drastically reduce or gradually phase out plastics altogether in favour of compostable materials, this plastic waste problem will continue to grow.”

The 2030 strategy

Though the 2025 goals are out of reach, APCO says significant progress has been made and it wants the industry to build on this momentum.

The not-for-profit is paving a new path to circularity with its 2030 strategy.

The plan includes financial incentives for companies that incorporate sustainability into their packaging designs.

“That essentially means that if you choose the right materials and you choose recycled content, you, as a brand owner, will pay a reduced fee through what we call eco-modulation,” says Foley.

“Those fees collected from Australian businesses will then be reinvested back into the Australian packaging system. So those fees go straight back into closing gaps from the collection, the sorting and the recycling.”

It is also prioritising investment in additional infrastructure to better process waste.

What can consumers do?

Foley says consumers also have a role to play.

The average Australian uses 146kg of packaging per year, according to APCO.

“I think probably a really key call out is to look for the Australasian recycling label. Follow those directions and you can then do your bit, but then make sure at the other end — when you’re back in the supermarket — make sure that you look for products on the shelf that are made with recycled content and/or look for packaging that features recycled content.”

Macklin advises consumers to keep an eye out for retailers trying to improve their systems.

“Retailers who are trying to not just switch, for example, from plastic to paper, but actually to reduce their overall use of materials or retailers who are trying to make it easier for customers by providing reusable bags or providing containers or returnable things.”