The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP, Minister for the Environment and Water
The Hon Reece Whitby MLA, Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Action
The Federal and Western Australian Labor governments are co-investing $44.1 million in nine new recycling projects to improve recycling capabilities across Perth and in regional areas.
In total, the nine projects will divert an additional 143,000 tonnes of material from Western Australia’s landfills every year and support 246 ongoing and construction jobs.
The new and upgraded facilities will sort, process and recycle used plastics, tyres, paper and cardboard into valuable new products, such as high-quality plastic pipe.
Funded projects include a tyre recycling and devulcanization facility that will process 12,000 tonnes of off-the-road tyres each year. Devulcanization is the process of converting waste tyres into material that can be used to make new rubber-based products. This is a valuable resource which may otherwise be lost to landfill.
Industry is playing a significant part and contributing an additional $55.7 million to these important projects.
The Recycling Modernisation Fund is accelerating Australia’s transition to a safe circular economy so that when a product is no longer useful or required for its initial purpose, it is either reused, recycled or remanufactured.
Nationally, the Federal Government is increasing recycling capacity in Australia by more than a million tonnes every year while creating over 3,000 jobs, including over 540 in WA.
When combined with co-investment from all states and industry, the Recycling Modernisation Fund will give a $1 billion boost to Australian recycling.