Soft Plastics Recycling Is Back But Many Australians Do Not Realise It

After the REDcycle collapse left many Australians confused, the good news has been slow to spread. The options are coming back, and some of them are closer than you think.

Most people remember the moment they gave up on soft plastic recycling. Maybe it was when the bins disappeared from the front of the supermarket without explanation. Maybe it was reading a headline about stockpiled plastic that was never processed. Or maybe it was just the quiet decision, standing at the kitchen bin with a bread bag in hand, to stop trying and accept that this particular category of rubbish had nowhere good to go.

That moment made sense. When REDcycle, Australia's main soft plastic collection program, suspended operations in late 2022, it left a gap that no one immediately filled. The bins came down. The habit broke. And for many households, the assumption has stuck ever since: soft plastics go in the bin.

The reality is changing, even if the news has not quite caught up.

A new generation of collection schemes has been quietly coming back online. Soft Plastics Stewardship Australia, formed by Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, and major food manufacturers including Nestlé and Mars, has been running pilots across New South Wales and Victoria, with plans to expand nationally as processing capacity grows. In parallel, the Curby kerbside scheme has been operating in parts of New South Wales and is now expanding into South Australia, offering households a soft plastic collection that goes out alongside the regular recycling.

The difference this time is that the processing infrastructure actually exists before the collection starts. Facilities in Kundle Kundle, Melbourne, and regional Victoria are operational and taking material. The system is being built properly, from the processor back to the bin, rather than the other way around.

For a household that has been quietly putting soft plastics in the general waste for the past few years, the practical question is simple: does a collection point exist near me?

The answer may well be yes. For in-store drop-off, a participating Coles, Woolworths, or Aldi store may have a bin near the entrance. For kerbside collection, the Curby scheme lists participating councils on its website. Awareness of these options tends to lag well behind their actual availability, which means many people are bin-bound out of habit rather than necessity.

Even where a drop-off point does exist, the next barrier is storage. Soft plastics are light but bulky. A week of bread bags, pasta packets, and frozen food wrappers can fill a drawer without weighing much. A household that accumulates material before each trip makes more use of the journey. Tools like The Shrinker! help by compressing loose soft plastics into compact nuggets at home, making it practical to store more without the pile taking over the kitchen.

For many families, the breakthrough moment is realising the habit does not need to be difficult. It does not require a special routine or a separate trip. It just requires a designated spot in the kitchen, a product that keeps the pile manageable, and the occasional check on whether the nearest collection point has come back online. The biggest barrier is often simply not knowing the option has returned, which is why the first step for most households is just looking up what is available in their area.

The bin that disappeared in 2022 is not back everywhere yet. But it is coming back, and for a growing number of Australian households, the option already exists. The first step is simply checking whether it is available nearby.