Circular Plastics Australia named sustainability leader

Circular Plastics Australia (PET) has been named as one of The Australian Financial Review’s Sustainability Leaders for 2023 in manufacturing and consumer goods for its two PET plastic bottle recycling facilities.

The joint venture partnership between Pact Group, Cleanaway Waste Management, Asahi Beverages and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) opened the first of its PET recycling facilities in Albury last year, with the second plant in Altona North in Melbourne due to commence operations later this year.

The two plants will have the combined capacity to recycle around two billion 600 mL PET beverage bottles each year, diverting tens of thousands of tonnes of plastic waste from landfill. They are designed to produce about 20,000 tonnes of recycled PET plastic each year by processing used beverage bottles into food-grade resin, which can be used to manufacture new beverage bottles and food packaging.

The Albury plant is understood to be Australia’s largest end-to-end PET recycling facility, a title it will share with the Altona North site once it is complete.

These facilities enable Australia to recycle and manufacture PET plastic beverage bottles and packaging locally, without the need to import plastic material for new packaging. Circular Plastics Australia (PET) leverages the expertise of each partner for the solution. Cleanaway collects, sorts and delivers plastic waste to the recycling facilities; Pact operates the recycling facilities and uses the resin to make new packaging; and Asahi Beverages and CCEP use the resin to make new beverage bottles.

The facilities incorporate solar panels into the design to power some of the operations, and water will be reused and recycled where possible using water treatment units and rainwater tanks. The facilities will receive support from the Australian Government’s Recycling Modernisation Fund and the NSW Government’s Waste Less, Recycle More initiative (Albury) and the Victorian Government’s Recycling Victoria – Recycling Modernisation Fund (Altona North).