Lang
Snackbrands Australia has completed a trial using recycled oil to manufacture plastic packaging. (Supplied by: Snackbrands Australia)
In short:
What's next?
Would you like your potato chips to come in packaging made from the very same oil they were cooked in?
An Australian potato chip manufacturer is doing exactly that — using surplus cooking oil to create its packaging.
Snackbrands Australia, which produces a range of potato chips including Thins, CCs and Cheezles, has completed the first phase of its trial at Viva Energy's refinery in Geelong.
The refinery normally produces soft plastics using fossil fuels, but earlier this year it trialled replacing crude oil with used cooking oil, importing about 120 tonnes from Snackbrands Australia's facility in Sydney.
About 120 tonnes of used cooking oil was transported to the Geelong refinery and converted into millions of packets. (Reuters: Jason Lee)
Used cooking oil is typically used as animal feed or exported to be turned into biodiesel.
Now it is being converted into food-grade plastic, heated before being turned into bio-pellets and then made into packaging.
This is the first time this has been done in Australia, and the new packaging is expected to appear in stores next year.
Tracey Seager, innovation and sustainability manager at Snackbrands Australia, said the initiative had helped reduce the company's reliance on virgin plastic and cut its greenhouse gas emissions.
"For us, the exciting thing about turning used cooking oil into packaging is that it means anything we can send there, would have gone to those other areas," she said.
"That means we're importing less fossil fuel or fewer oil tankers coming into ports in Australia," she said.
Tracey Seager from Snackbrands Australia says the initiative is helping the company reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. (Supplied)
The 120 tonnes of used cooking oil was converted into 100 tonnes of soft plastic, which was then turned into 15 million packets.
Viva Energy said the process could significantly reduce carbon emissions from production compared with crude oil.
The company produces about 80,000 tonnes of plastic each year, used for packaging food, banknotes, ready-meal containers and face masks.
The company plans to reduce its use of crude oil in plastic production by using waste cooking oils and pyrolysis oil derived from plastic over the next five to ten years.
Pyrolysis oil is made from plastic by reheating it at very high temperatures.
Viva Energy's Geelong refinery produces about 80,000 tonnes of soft plastic each year. (Supplied by: Viva Energy)
James Harrington, sales and trading manager at Viva Energy Australia, said the company was looking to expand the initiative but needed more support.
"We're looking for other opportunities to roll out circular bioplastics. There's a lot of used cooking oil collected in Victoria that could be used for the same application," he said.
"It requires investment, collection, legislation and government support in terms of mandatory content targets for recycling."
Recycled Packaging Destined Only For Landfill
Mr Harrington said recycling packaging made from cooking oil remained a challenge, as it could currently only be disposed of in landfill.
He suggested plastic pyrolysis as one solution to avoid landfill.
"We're looking for a way to dispose of it in a bag as part of the normal recycling process, or to return it to the store," Mr Harrington said.
He said the company was investigating the safety of the soft plastic and had so far found no negative environmental effects.
Trevor Thornton, a senior sustainability lecturer at Deakin University, said establishing a closed-loop system was essential to reduce the volume of waste going to landfill and the associated greenhouse gas emissions.
Trevor Thornton from Deakin University says more attention needs to be paid to reducing packaging size. (ABC News: James Oaten)
But he said it was important for consumers to know how to correctly dispose of the recycled packaging.
"I would be more concerned about the community putting these types of materials into recycling streams, believing it's plastic and can be recycled, and thereby contaminating it," Dr Thornton said.
He said another focus should be on reducing the amount of packaging to cut the volume requiring recycling.
"You go to buy something, potato chips or whatever, and the packet is twice the size of the actual contents because it makes it look like you're getting a lot of food," Dr Thornton said.
"So we need to look at all the ways to try to reduce the amount of packaging, regardless of what it's made from."
Source: ABC