Did you know that UQ provides soft plastics recycling on campus?

collection of soft plasticsSoft plastics (any plastic that can be easily scrunched into a ball) can present a problem for council kerbside recycling, as they often get caught in the recycling machinery.

Items that can be recycled in UQ's soft plastics recycling stream:

  • plastic shopping bags
  • shrinkwrap or pallet wrap
  • soft packaging for items such as biscuits, pasta, confectionery and frozen food
  • bread and cereal bags

Items that are not suitable for the soft plastics recycling stream:

  • plastic bottles
  • plastic containers (e.g., yoghurt containers)
  • any other forms of rigid plastic (e.g., meat trays or strawberry punnets)
  • glass
  • rubber
  • tin cans

Soft plastic recyling poster can be found here. Unless they're larger than A5 size, there's no need to remove any small paper labels from packaging such as shrinkwrap, as a little bit of paper won't affect the recycling process.

Students

Drop your soft plastic at the Reuse & Recycling Station.

Staff

To request a soft plastic bin in your office area/kitchen, log a ‘waste’ request in ARCHIBUS.

While the new soft plastics recycling initiative is great news for sustainable practice on campus, the best environmental choice you can make is to avoid your use of plastic as much as you can.