An education campaign has been launched to raise awareness among SMEs about the benefits of adopting the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL) and encourage them to improve the sustainability of their packaging.
Spearheading the campaign are the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), the National Retail Association (NRA), the Australian Institute of Packaging (AIP), and the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC).
The campaign aims to educate 20,000 small businesses about the benefits of using the ARL on-pack, the labelling standard that provides easy-to-understand instructions to consumers about how to correctly dispose of all parts of a product’s packaging, which will make it easier for households to recycle and thus increase resource recovery, and reduce waste stream contamination.
The education campaign is the first part of a series of initiatives under the SME ARL Program which targets the full adoption of the ARL. Through the campaign, SMEs will receive access to a range of free educational tools, resources and events designed to provide greater understanding about the initiative and empower them to take action to improve the sustainability of their packaging.
“We understand that sustainability is an important issue for small businesses, but with so many competing priorities, getting started can be difficult,” Chris Foley, CEO of APCO (the campaign lead organisation) said. “Through this campaign we are excited to provide the tools and resources Australia’s small businesses need to start improving the sustainability of their packaging today.
“These organisations play an important role in the Australian business community,” Foley added. “By helping them get the ARL on-pack and start working towards the 2025 National Packaging Targets, this campaign can provide a powerful step forward in Australia’s collective journey towards a more sustainable and circular packaging future.”
David Stout, Director of Policy at the NRA, has welcomed the opportunity to help more SMEs in their efforts to become more sustainable.
“While businesses are highly supportive of sustainability initiatives, they often don’t have the time or resources needed to understand the technical intricacies of packaging requirements and trends,” Stout said. “As part of our engagement, it is critical that we bring businesses and consumers along with us.”
And Nerida Kelton, Executive Director of AIP, said, “The AIP is extremely proud to be one of the four partners in the new campaign which is a very important initiative funded by the Federal Government. The AIP strongly encourages all SMEs to start implementing the ARL on all of their packaging to ensure that their customers honestly know what can and cannot be collected, sorted, recovered and recycled in their region.
“The ARL is an effective and intuitive on-pack labelling program that can help guide all Australians to accurately dispose of the materials and packaging into the right bins every time,” Kelton added. “Consumer engagement in the process is critical to improve collection and recycling rates in the region. We look forward to working with as many small businesses as possible to help train and educate them to see the true value that the ARL can offer their business and in turn their customers.”
Tanya Barden, CEO of AFGC described ARL as an “important tool that is helping consumers recycle packaging the right way and create clean streams of material ready for recycling into new products”. Barden pointed out that many Australian food and grocery manufacturers have already put the ARL on thousands of products and the AFGC is encouraging all companies to take part in the program.
“Australia has an enormous opportunity to build new capacity in areas including advanced recycling of soft plastic packaging, and adopting the ARL is an important way for companies of all sizes to support the environment and a new, sustainable industry,” Barden concluded.
