The Albanese Government promised packaging reforms that would require brand owners to make plastic packaging recyclable, recoverable and remade with recycled content.

Instead, it has walked away from those commitments and chosen to back a co-regulatory scheme that has failed to deliver meaningful change for more than two decades.

This matters because Australia’s recycling industry cannot survive on good intentions alone.

The Government’s own data shows around one million tonnes of plastic packaging is still being sent to landfill rather than recovered for recycling. At the same time, Australia’s recycling infrastructure remains underutilised, while some facilities have already closed their doors.

Governments have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in recycling infrastructure. But infrastructure without feedstock is like building roads without cars. Recycling plants only survive when there is consistent demand for recycled material and clear incentives for packaging to be designed for recovery.

That is why an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for packaging matters.

EPR shifts the cost of managing packaging waste away from ratepayers and councils to the brand owners that place packaging on the market. It creates a direct financial incentive to reduce waste, improve packaging design, increase recycling and use more recycled content.

Around the world, EPR schemes have transformed recycling rates and provided the long-term investment certainty needed to build circular economies without adding additional costs to consumers.

Australia is heading in the opposite direction.

Without meaningful reform, more recyclable material will be lost to landfill, more recycling businesses will struggle, and more taxpayer-funded infrastructure risks becoming stranded.

The choice facing the Government is simple: continue defending a failed voluntary approach or introduce the mandatory producer responsibility framework it promised.

Australia’s recyclers, manufacturers and consumers deserve better than another 20 years of a failed system. The time for proper packaging regulation is now.

Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt’s media release is available HERE