A more efficient and sustainable way to dispose of your soft plastic
With your help, we’re diverting soft plastic from sitting in landfill forever and turning it back into a useful resource.
We take the soft plastic we collect to local recyclers while pushing for research and innovation in creating products from recycled materials.
Why do we collect soft plastic?
In Australia, although soft plastic is technically recyclable it can’t go into our council recycling bins - as a result, most of it (more than 90% of it) ends up in landfill.
In our work measuring and analysing the waste from hospitality businesses, we found that (behind ground coffee) soft plastic was often the leading recyclable material that was being sent to landfill via businesses general waste bins. Identifying this as a huge waste (and a huge opportunity to recover more resources) we connected with a local recycler to establish a more sustainable end-point for soft plastic waste and added soft plastic to the waste streams that we collect from our partners.
Not only are we removing waste from your workplace and diverting it from landfill, but we can also help you understand what you need to do to avoid and minimise the use of this material in the first place.
How does soft plastic collection work?
We’ll provide you with bags for your soft plastic materials and collect them at a frequency that matches your volume. Once our drivers collect your bags, we compact them ready for recycling.
What happens to the soft plastic when it’s recycled?
Our Victorian recycling partner is using Australia’s first soft plastic pyrolysis technology to convert soft plastic back into oil, the material which forms the base of all plastic products. This oil can then be used to create new soft plastic, reducing the need to extract crude oil to produce virgin plastics. This process keeps recycling local and keeps your soft plastic in the local circular economy.
Why is there a fee?
It costs money to collect, transfer, and process soft plastic; unless the plastic’s manufacturer (or the federal, state or local government) is willing to cover that cost, it needs to be passed along.
Businesses pay for waste collection already, regardless of who collects it and where it goes (in fact, due to rising landfill levies, recycling is increasingly the cheapest option for waste.) Given you are already paying for waste services, we think it makes sense to choose to pay an organisation that you want to support - and to pay for an outcome that you can be proud of.
Reground is a certified social enterprise – we put any profits from the operation of our business back into creating access to sustainable and circular waste and recycling practices that benefit the whole community. When cafes, offices, councils and retailers decide to work with Reground, they’re investing in and supporting a movement that benefits everyone – especially our planet.
We collect Soft Plastic from these conscious companies.
“We knew Reground to be deeply passionate, collaborative and solutions-focussed, doing great things on a small scale in Melbourne. We needed a soft plastic recycling solution, so Reground was the obvious choice, especially as they collect and reprocess the plastic locally.”