Curby tags expand soft plastics recycling in Australia

A soft plastics recycling program has expanded its accessibility through the introduction of Curby tags at participating supermarkets. In areas including Newcastle, Port Stephens, and the Central Coast, Curby ‘Bag in a Bin’ tags are available at 22 Woolworths stores, allowing households to recycle eligible soft plastics via their standard yellow-lidded kerbside recycling bins.

Under this system, residents place eligible plastics into a bag, secure it with a registered Curby tag, and include it in their household recycling. These tagged bags can then be identified and separated at Material Recovery Facilities to prevent contamination of conventional recycling streams. Alternatively, consumers can continue to return soft plastics in-store at various Woolworths, Coles, and Aldi locations.

Collected materials are sent to a Soft Plastics Engineered Commodity (SPEC) facility on the Mid North Coast, operated by iQRenew. This facility was supported by a $9.1 million grant from the Australian and New South Wales governments.