Residents in Albury, Alpine, Indigo and Wodonga Councils can recycle their soft plastic at home by collecting it in Council-supplied orange soft plastic collection bags. When the bag is completely full, tie a double knot and place it in your yellow lidded recycling bin for collection.

Please note that Albury and Wodonga resident collection bag numbers are capped so once the allocated household numbers are reached for these councils the registration process will be closed to these council residents for the trial period.   

Albury, Alpine and Wodonga council residents 

To participate, please register using the form below. After registering, you will receive an email with instructions on where to pick up your council’s soft plastic collection bags (a pack of 20 will be provided).

Indigo Shire residents

All residents should have received a pack in the mail with orange soft plastic collection bags and instructions on how to participate. If you haven’t received your pack, please contact council. If your household does not wish to participate, you can give the pack to a neighbour or friend within Indigo Shire, or return it to the council at your nearest customer service point.

Indigo residents taking part in the soft plastic recycling program are encouraged to register using the form below. This will allow you to complete surveys during the pilot phase and provide feedback on how we can improve the service.

Step 1: Fill the supplied orange bag with clean, empty and dry soft scrunchable plastics.

Step 2: When the bag is full and tight like a basketball, firmly tie with a double knot and place the bag in your yellow-lidded recycling bin for collection. This may be monthly or even longer, depending on when the bag is full.

Soft Plastics can only be recycled in your yellow lidded recycling bin if collected in the supplied orange bag. Soft plastics should never be placed loose in your recycling bin.

Soft plastic is ‘scrunchable’ plastic. Use the ‘scrunch’ test as a guide – soft plastics tend to stay scrunched in a ball whereas hard plastics go back to their shape or can’t be scrunched.

We want all your clean, empty and dry soft plastic.

Orange Soft Plastic Collection Bags can be picked-up at the following locations:

Albury

Kiewa Street Customer Service Centre or the Lavington Library

Wodonga

Hovell Street Customer Service Centre

Alpine Shire

Bright Customer Service Centre, your local library or Visitor Information Centre

Indigo Shire

Your first collection pack (containing 20 bags) was sent to your mailbox.

If you run out of bags, more can be collected at the Customer Service Centres in Beechworth, Chiltern, Rutherglen and Yackandandah.

Thanks to the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC), Halve Waste, AlburyCity, Indigo, Alpine and Wodonga councils, Cleanaway, and the soft plastics recycling industry, this pilot program is available at no cost to participating households. The pilot phase will allow all partners to learn about the collection, processing, and costs associated with recycling soft plastics using our yellow-lidded bins.

We know soft plastics appear with all sorts of products and so much of it ends up in landfill. This pilot is important because until now we have been unable to recycle soft plastic through your kerbside recycling bin. Loose soft plastics jam up equipment in the collection truck and recycling centre, and too easily become litter or end up in landfill.

As a true circular economy model, we need to make it easier for people to recycle soft plastics at home and support the development of a new, advanced recycling industry here in Australia to take that packaging and turn it back into new material, ready for reuse.

We can sort the bags at the recycling centre, send them to a plastics processor for cleaning and treatment to then go to make new plastic products. This process helps reduce the need for virgin plastics, minimizes waste sent to landfills, lowers emissions, and cuts down on litter.

Loose soft plastics and bagged recyclable items can get tangled in recycling machinery, which is why we always ask our residents to not bag recyclable items normally.

The orange pilot bags are designed for easy identification. When filled and sealed correctly, the bags can be easily separated from other recyclable items and will not get caught in the machinery.

It’s very important to keep all other items in your yellow lidded recycling bin loose (not bagged) as you usually do.

Yes – you can keep filling any orange bags and adding to your regular yellow lidded recycling bins until you use them all up.

No. For Phase 2 of the Soft Plastic Recycling Pilot, our primary focus is on assessing household recycling behaviour. As such participation is currently limited to households only.

Should additional participation be required, we may consider including businesses in the future.

Businesses can recycle their clean and clear soft plastic waste such as heavy-duty film wrap, shrink-wrap and bubble wrap by bringing it to the collection point at the Albury Waste Management Centre (charges apply). Alternatively, commercial waste providers have options for recycling soft plastic waste.

Unfortunately, participation in this phase of the pilot is limited to residents of the Albury, Alpine, Indigo, and Wodonga council areas.

We are collaborating with the recycling scheme coordinators to support the expansion of soft plastic recycling. However, to effectively test various aspects of the recycling process and scheme administration, we need to keep the number of trial participants manageable. This allows us to ensure that the plastics are properly recycled and to refine the system without overloading it

Yes! During the pilot we will invite you to complete some surveys. We look forward to hearing your views on how we can improve the program.

Throughout the pilot, councils, recyclers, brands, governments and all our partners will be collecting data and information on what works and what can be improved to inform the next phase to grow the program.  

This program is not connected to the REDcycle store drop-off scheme. The plastics collected will be processed into flake, pellets or building substitutes, as well as into oil for renewed plastics by entities such as Viva in Geelong. All councils and companies involved in the pilot are collaborating with agreements in place.