Australia’s plan to curb plastic pollution has failed miserably

Australia needs a new national plan to stomp out massive levels of plastic pollution, a government inquiry has found, with experts and advocates saying that previous approaches have failed to effectively slow down the amount of plastic entering our waterways.

Drowning In Waste, an inquiry into plastic pollution chaired by Labor MP Tony Zappia, found that the current National Plastics Plan is “a disjointed compilation of goals, disappointingly some of which were already completed prior to the plan being developed”.

Critics have pointed to the failed REDcycle scheme — where supermarkets were found hoarding thousands of tonnes of plastic waste they could not recycle — as an indicator of what’s broken in Australia’s approach to plastic recycling.