Corflutes – for the last five weeks, they’ve been almost impossible to avoid.

The plastic campaign signs popped up in Australia’s 150 electorates almost overnight when the 2025 federal election was called and now that it’s over with Labor securing a decisive win, they’re about to vanish for another few years.

What happens to them next, however, depends entirely on the person whose face is on the sign.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) does not mandate what materials candidates use for signage nor how they dispose of signage after an election.

That means it’s up to individual candidates to decide how they want to deal with their corflutes this week, whether they keep them for the next campaign, send them to landfill, or recycle them.

Or repurpose them in some other way, like for the treatment of wombat mange.

Most corflute signs are made from polypropylene, a category 5 plastic which is cheap, lightweight, and waterproof. It’s also recyclable in certain conditions.

We say “most” because Corflute is actually a brand name.

Genuine Corflute is a plastic twin-wall fluted sheet produced by Corex, an Australian company based in Victoria.

Over time, the term corflute has come to be used for any Corflute-like corrugated plastic (much like how the brand name Perspex is used to describe any acrylic sheet).

It has also become synonymous with large election campaign signs, specifically fence signs and A-frames, which are colloquially referred to as corflutes.

And recycling corflutes of any kind isn’t as simple as tossing them into a yellow-lid recycling bin.

Genuine Corflute signs with no contaminants (eyelets, ties, etc) can be recycled through Corex, which operates its own closed-loop recycling facility in Melbourne.

9news understands that campaign managers for multiple candidates have already contacted Corex about recycling corflutes after the 2025 federal election.

Independent Member for Kooyong Dr Monique Ryan recovered and returned around 2000kg of material to Corex for recycling after the 2022 federal election and confirmed to 9news she will be doing the same this year.

“Sustainability is very important to our campaign and we have implemented significant measures during our planning process to ensure that all materials are recycled appropriately after the election,” Ryan’s media team said.

Some local councils also offer to recycle corflutes through a specialist waste stream, details of which can typically be found on the council website.

As with genuine Corflute, it’s up to individual candidates to pursue recycling options for corflutes made by other manufacturers.

Candidates who don’t recycle their corflutes can send them to landfill, reuse them in future campaigns, or find more unique ways to repurpose them. 

ACT Labor told 9news.com.au it donates corflutes to schools, community groups, and sporting groups, where they’re repurposed for arts and crafts and treatment of wombat mange, among other uses.

Some are donated to the National Library of Australia, others are kept for future campaigns, and some are recycled through the ACT government’s recycling program.

A member of One Nation told 9news.com.au that he has been donating used corflute signage to glaziers to use as padding for glass panes for several years.