Plastics
National Plastics Plan
Australia is on a plastics mission. It’s a significant challenge and we all – governments, industry and the community – have a role to play.
The National Plastics Plan outlines our actions to:
- reduce plastic waste and increase recycling rates
- find alternatives to the plastics we don’t need
- reduce the amount of plastics impacting our environment.
Download the plan
Actions from the Plastics Plan
The National Plastics Plan outlines our approach to increase recycling, find alternatives to plastic and reduce the impact of plastic on the environment.
Timeline
2019
- Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to establish a timetable to ban the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres
- National Waste Policy Action Plan (NWPAP) agreed to by Australia’s environment ministers
2020
- First National Plastics Summit
- Passing of the Recycling and Waste Reduction Act 2020
- Microbeads phased out in rinse-off cosmetics, personal care and cleaning products
2021
- CSIRO’s A circular economy roadmap for plastics, tyres, glass and paper in Australia (January 2021)
- First National Plastics Plan delivers on action 5.5 of the NWPAP
- Regulate unsorted mixed plastic waste exports (July 2021)
- First review of National Environment Protection (Used Packaging Materials) Measure 2011 and the Australian Packaging Covenant to evaluate the co-regulatory arrangements
- National Plastics Design Summit
2022
- Regulate unprocessed single polymer or resin waste plastic exports (July 2022)
- Phase out plastic packaging products containing additive fragmentable technology that do not meet relevant compostable standards (AS4736-2006, AS5810-2010 and EN13432) (July 2022)
- Phase out expanded polystyrene (EPS) from loose fill and moulded packaging in consumer packaging (July 2022), and EPS food and beverage containers (December 2022)
- Phase out PVC packaging labels (December 2022)
- Review progress of 2025 National Packaging Targets
2023
- At least 80% of supermarket products to display the Australasian Recycling Label (December 2023)
2025
- National Packaging Targets for industry:
- 100% of packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable
- 70% of plastic packaging goes on to be recycled or composted
- 50% average recycled content within packaging (20% for plastic packaging)
- problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics packaging phased out (target 5 of NWPAP)
- Work with textile and white goods industry to phase in microplastic filters for washing machines
2030
- Work with the textile and white goods sectors on an industry-led phase-in of microfibre filters on new residential and commercial washing machines by 1 July 2030
