Kimberly-Clark and Relivit bring nappy recycling to Australia

Australia currently produces 450,000 tonnes of disposable nappies and other absorbent hygiene waste each year - enough to fill the MCG stadium twice over. Now, Huggies nappy manufacturer Kimberly-Clark Australia is partnering with start-up company Relivit to recycle this waste for the first time in Australia.

Kimberly-Clark will send manufacturing waste from its Huggies Nappy Mill in south-west Sydney to Relivit, whose business model and technology allows over 95% of disposable nappies, as well as female hygiene and adult incontinence products, to be diverted away from landfill. In addition, an exclusive partnership with the Huggies brand will give consumers the option to recycle their hygiene waste.

Jacquie Fegent-McGeachie, head of sustainability and corporate affairs at Kimberly-Clark Australia & New Zealand, said the company has been working hard for years to allow its products to be recycled post use and is therefore “thrilled to be supporting Relivit in establishing Australia’s first absorbent hygiene waste facility”.

“We believe that Relivit’s business model, which is set to make recycling absorbent hygiene waste cheaper than landfill, will be a game changer for waste management in Australia,” she added. “Relivit has the technology to recover the materials from absorbent hygiene products post-use and will help to address landfill.”

Relivit has worked to secure a site on the south coast of NSW that will service from Newcastle and the Lower Hunter through the Central Coast and Sydney, down to Wollongong and the Southern Illawarra. The company’s managing director, Mark Dunn, explained that with Kimberly-Clark “joining our other partners Initial Hygiene and Bunzl Outsourcing Services, we’re hoping to secure the final piece of funding needed to start building our first facility in NSW”.

Once the targeted capital investment has been secured, Relivit’s plant will recover the paper fibre, plastic and super absorbent polymer (SAP) contained in absorbent hygiene waste to be used to manufacture new products such as park benches, building materials and more. Dunn said the initiative will “allow us to create 70 new, sustainable jobs, divert tens of thousands of tonnes of waste from landfill and reclaim millions of dollars’ worth of materials”.