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The South Australian Government is considering banning single-use plastic products such as coffee cups with plastic lining, straws, and cutlery. According to an Australian Senate inquiry, single-use plastics could be banned by 2023.

While the percentage of waste going to landfill has decreased, waste tonnage overall is growing with the economy and population. Recycling doesn’t change the amount of waste created. Instead, it minimises resources lost by diverting material from landfill and transforming it into a new material. Sounds good in theory, but two basic questions about recycling persist: is it really good for the environment and does it make economic sense?

Merlo Coffee today launching a compostable cup crusade to stop more than three million cups going to landfill each year.

Australians have a love affair with coffee, each year using an estimated 1 billion disposable coffee cups. That's approximately 2,700,000 paper cups tossed out every day. So it’s no surprise that new cup recycling schemes are popping up. But do they actually work? 

BioPak compostable cups featured on the latest episode of ABC’s War On Waste

Tuesday night’s War on Waste episode broadcast by the ABC featured BioPak compostable bioplastic BioCups as a solution Kiama High School canteen are implementing to divert waste from landfill, and avoiding the use of conventional plastic. What if more institutions switched from conventional plastic cups to compostable bioplastic cups?

As featured in The Age | 12 January 2018

After years of doing the right thing by separating our garbage so that our glass bottles, newspapers and plastics can be recycled, Victorians are now being told that all that recycling could be, well, a waste of time.

According to the Municipal Association of Victoria, a decision by China to place a ban on the import of recycling materials from outside the country has resulted in several councils having their recycling contracts cut back by our waste companies. If this continues, councils will have to stockpile millions of tonnes of waste or worse, dump it all in landfills.

MEDIA RELEASE – 11 December 2017 (updated 06 April 2018)

BioPak, a global leader in the innovation and production of environmentally - sustainable packaging, today unveiled Australia’s first comprehensive composting service for food service packaging, including paper coffee cups, in a move designed to divert food scraps and food service packaging from landfill. The Chief Executive Officer of BioPak, Gary Smith, said the new service will allow customers to dispose of used coffee cups and BioPak compostable takeaway food packaging in specially designed collection bins at their local cafes or workplaces.

BioPak’s ground-breaking disposable coffee cups are recyclable, especially when compared to other disposable packaging, including milk cartons, according to new independent research.

The Chief Executive Officer of BioPak, Gary Smith, said that contrary to some of the misinformation in the public space, research commissioned by the company had confirmed that its disposable cups could be recycled commercially.