Upgrading Victoria’s infrastructure to recycle more plastic and glass

Through our Recycling Victoria Infrastructure Fund – Materials program, we have partnered with the Australian Government under its Recycling Modernisation Fund to award $8.1 million to six Victorian organisations to build new and upgrade existing recycling infrastructure and facilities across the state. This will allow the state to recycle more plastic and glass so that less ends up in landfill.

The projects, worth $58.7 million in total, will process 205,000 tonnes of glass and 23,000 tonnes of plastic every year. This enables industry and councils to turn more recycled glass into jars, bottles and fibreglass, and plastic into bottles and containers, or used in the construction of new roads and footpaths.

Victoria will more than double its domestic recycling of glass and boost its domestic plastics recycling by almost 40% while creating 70 new jobs, following the joint investment.

The projects include building a new glass recycling plant that will create 14 new jobs and process an additional 140,000 tonnes of glass each year. It also includes new plastics recycling technology that will produce concrete slab foundations made from 100% recycled plastic to service the construction industry.

This Victorian and Australian government investment will increase Victoria’s capacity to sort, process and remanufacture materials through innovative infrastructure and technology, ahead of the national waste export ban which comes into full effect by 2024.

Recycling Victoria: building our circular economy

These projects will support Victoria’s transition to a four-bin recycling system that will see an overhaul of the household recycling collection system.

This is part of Recycling Victoria: A New Economy, the Government’s $380 million action plan to strengthen the state’s recycling industry, reduce waste, create thousands of new jobs and set up Victoria for a more sustainable future.

Visit the Recycling Victoria policy website.

Recycling Modernisation Fund

The Australian Government is committing $190 million, nationally, to the Recycling Modernisation Fund. It will generate $600 million of recycling investment and drive a billion-dollar transformation of Australia’s waste and recycling capacity.

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