Recycling Silage Wrap a great innovative way to get plastic from Landfill

Amanda with members of DIG , David Walker , Kyleigh Cochrane ,Craig Tate and Ed George from Plasback

Recently I got to attend the Dairy Industry Group (DIG) meeting which was hosting a rep from Tapex  / PlasBack to discuss silage wrap and bailing twine recycling.

Silage wrap is a bit of a problem especially in winter when vast amounts of silage is used to help keep cattle in condition over winter.

For the non country reader silage wrap is the plastic that covers grass or other harvested material to keep it from breaking down the harvested product is kept for feed in hard times

A familiar sight in farming districts- silage bales of feed stored and ready for use

Silage is an important part of farming practices, but until now the only option for used silage wrap was to gather it up and send it to the tip-unwieldy, messy and smelly but hey that's farming.

Tapex is a producer of silage wrap and twine and have created an extended producer program called PlasBack.The main aim of PlasBack is to up cycle used wrap into other useful products.

The farmer needs to purchase bags which are made of the same plastic composite as the wrap but a bit tougher, fill the bag, collect a truck full and deliver to Nowra or Ulladulla waste transfer stations. The PlasBack semi comes and takes the bags away- compress' them for transportation into bales. The bales are then sent for recycling- they make a small range of products that have agricultural uses.

I was so impressed with this system that I went back to Council and sought support to give some seed funding to farmers for purchasing the plastic bags. Council supported the seed funding of $5000 from the waste fund so hopefully that will help kick start the program in this area.

I also sent my motion to other Councillor in Wingecarrabie and Kiama seeking cross regional support.

The idea behind the seed funding is help dilute the cost to farmers during the important habit changing phase. With less waste going to Landfill that's less waste levy going to the NSW State Government and more money staying locally for projects in the Shoalhaven.

Good on Tapex for taking extended producer responsibility seriously and not waiting for legislation to force them to do something.

With Dave Walker - The bin I'm touching is made from recycled silage wrap and with a bag inside it becomes a storage container to bag up old wrap.