Robotic decentralised soft plastic recycling platform on the way

With the potential to turn tonnes of soft plastic into a useful product, businesses such as red meat processors will be able to support it in their ongoing efforts to divert non-organic wastes from landfill.

The first-of-its-kind robotics and artificial intelligence driven pilot-scale solution has the potential to not only reduce the industry's waste footprint but to also offset disposal costs.

Technology provider Recircle is heading up the project, of which AMPC is one of ten financial partners.

The pilot will be designed, built and accommodated within a Sydney warehouse, with selected national feedstocks being delivered for testing and validation of process.

AMPC sustainability manager Matthew Deegan said around 6,300 tonnes per annum of national non-organic waste in processing plants was used low-density polyethylene (LDPE) mixed plastics.

"There are around 44 different types of soft plastics at each of the 140 processor sites across Australia, which makes centralised recycling of these plastics unfeasible," he said.

"As a result, most of these plastics are sorted at plant prior to collection, but following collection it might end up in landfill."

The project comprises a syndicated group involved in plastics manufacturing, recycling, robotics, research, co-regulation, rubbish collection, chemicals and various industry representatives, who will work together.

Recircle has sourced $7.5 million in partner group funding for the three year project, including a $3m Commonwealth grant.

Recircle's Johnny Flammea said the objective would be for the pilot to help fill the gap in supply chain plastic stewardship solutions.

"Australia sends about 476,000t of soft plastic to landfill every year," he said.

"It is recovered at around 9pc, the lowest rate of any packaging material in the country. The barrier is not the material itself, it is that recycling it has never been economical - the film is light weight, bulky and so it is costly to move, it takes on contamination the moment it is handled with other waste and the recovery processes that do exist are expensive, sit mostly offshore and cannot compete on cost with virgin plastic.

"This system is designed to work as a single line. Soft plastics film is fed into the system, where vision technology, robotics and lasers identify physical contaminants and remove them. The film is then extruded and pelletised on site into recycled resin, ready to re-enter the manufacturing supply chain.

"There is no transport of waste to a central plant, no specialist staff needed to run it and no chemical process involved.

"Cleaned film returned to resin has real value; recovered polyethylene of this kind sells in the order of $1,200 to $2,000/t and because pellets are far more compact than loose film, whatever moves downstream moves more cheaply, whether it is used in Australia or exported.

"Every tonne recovered is a tonne kept out of landfill, and where recovered material displaces virgin plastic, the emissions attached to that plastic come down with it."