ISSUE 113 | APR/MAY 2023
28 A new way to sort waste 34 No butts 36 Focus on FOGO
NSW EPA focussed on collaboration
What now for soft plastic waste?
Walking the thin RED line By Inside Waste
REDcycle founder Liz Kasell.
filled once a day, every day. We knew that bin was going to get filled seven times a week and so we allocated that much space all the way through the pipeline. “Then, due to people staying at home all day through COVID, those bins were filling 12 times a day, or 15 times a day. If you multiply that by over a thousand locations, you realise the volumes I am talking about. (Continued on page 21)
PP: 100024538
ISSN 1837-5618
When the news broke that soft plastics collection business REDcycle had been storing soft plastics it had been collecting from Coles and Woolworths, company founder Liz Kasell knew it wasn’t a good look. Starting from an inkling of an idea she had 10 years ago, the scheme had grown too big, too fast – exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company recently went into liquidation despite Kasell and her team’s best efforts to make things right. So, what went wrong? To find out, you need to start at the beginning of the end – when the news broke in the mainstream media about soft plastic bales being stockpiled in warehouses throughout Victoria and New South Wales. It wasn’t that the bales of soft plastics had been found – after all there was no deliberate attempt to hide them – but the perception amplified by an over-excited media that inferred there were nefarious
reasons for the stockpiling. While Kasell readily admits REDcycle could have done things differently, she has not stopped working to find, and help build, end-markets for the plastics and to negate the partisan narrative that had been in the public arena. To understand how the warehouse situation unfolded, you must go back the best part of 24 months during COVID. Kasell describes it as a perfect storm in terms of the timeline and how things happened. COVID has been blamed for a lot of events and outcomes over the past three years – whether it be supply chain issues, supermarkets running out of stock, and a downturn in business for industries such as travel and hospitality. When it comes to the waste industry, there haven’t been too many knock-on effects, other than staffing shortages in some areas. With REDcycle, there was an opposite effect – too much feedstock. “All of a sudden, all of our downstream capacity was affected,” Kasell said. “For five years, we knew for example, a bin would get
ONE of the first things Tony Chappel did when he became the CEO of the NSW EPA was give a speech at the 2022 Australian Waste and Recycling Expo (AWRE), where he talked about “collective” collaboration between the state government, and waste and resource recovery stakeholders. Nine months down the track, how is that collaboration panning out? “I’ve been a little surprised by some of the entrenched positions, both within industry and the EPA itself. “Changing the way we work with industry and transitioning to a more collaborative approach isn’t going to happen overnight, it will take time and commitment but I firmly believe it will achieve the best outcomes for the environment, economy and communities. “The real focus is trying to look for opportunities to bring that conversation into the light and get people talking more productively.” Arriving in Australia from South Africa when he was two, the now ‘Ausified’ Chappel’s tertiary education includes a raft of degrees – a Bachelor of Laws and Economics from Sydney University, a Masters In Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford, as well as another Masters, this time in Environmental Engineering Technology/Environmental Technology from the Imperial College London, and finally a Master of Business Administration, Banking, Corporate, Finance and Securities Law from AGSM UNSW. (Continued on page 24)
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