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IrelandAustralia can recycle plastic. Why are its plants closing?
60 Minutes Australia examines stalled packaging reforms, struggling recyclers and the government's argument that mandates could raise household costs.
60 Minutes Australia
Story of Why this story? One of 60 Minutes Australia's most watched videos since yesterday, with 128,172 views.
What does it take to recycle plastic and why isn’t it being done? | 60 Minutes Australia
Things we can learn from the video
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- 1:36Gallagher demonstrates how his Taree facility converts soft plastic waste into resin pellets for manufacturing.
- 3:46Hodge describes building a hard-plastics recycling business that made furniture before operations stopped.
- 5:15Archive footage revisits Plibersek's promise of import requirements intended to give Australian waste a second life.
- 8:49Watt defends delaying mandates, citing the potential impact of packaging costs on household budgets.
- 13:20Toumbourou cites analysis putting the reforms' estimated household cost at six to fifty cents weekly.
Inside Danny Gallagher's Taree plant, machinery turns soft plastic waste into resin pellets ready for manufacturing. The process works. The question in 60 Minutes Australia's investigation is whether businesses doing that work can survive without the market promised by government reforms.
Reporter Dimity Clancey follows two operators facing different stages of that uncertainty. Gallagher says his facility faces imminent closure. Jess Hodge, whose business turned hard plastics into furniture, stands outside padlocked premises after handing the keys to administrators.
"I just wanted to do something that was good for the community and good for Australia and good for the world," Hodge says.
The report links their difficulties to the federal government's retreat from promised packaging reforms intended to increase demand for recycled plastic. Archival footage revisits former environment minister Tanya Plibersek's pledge that Australian consumer waste would receive a second life through requirements on imported products.
Environment Minister Murray Watt defends delaying mandates, saying the government must weigh the potential effect of higher packaging costs on household budgets. "As a government we need to balance a range of factors," he says.
Suzanne Toumbourou, chief executive of the Australian Council of Recycling, disputes that justification. She cites analysis estimating the reforms would cost families between six and fifty cents a week, and argues that further delay risks destroying Australia's domestic recycling capability.
The report has drawn about 128,000 views since yesterday. Its central disagreement is not over whether plastic can be processed: Gallagher demonstrates that. It is over who should create demand for the resulting material, and whether postponing that decision will leave plants like his with a future.
Australia’s Minister for Social Services since 2025. She previously served as Minister for the Environment and Water from 2022 to 2025.
More on Wikipedia ›Australia’s Minister for the Environment and Water since May 2025. A Labor Party politician, he has represented Queensland in the Senate since 2016.
More on Wikipedia ›Published on Trari
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- Channel
- 60 Minutes Australia
- Subscribers
- 6,750,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 7,751,664
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,083,356 (on a normal day: 1,060,402)
- Video published
- November 1, 2026
- Video views so far
- 128,172 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 148,989
The numbers
The recycling investigation was 60 Minutes Australia's most-watched new upload since yesterday.
💡 Test your knowledge
What does Gallagher's plant turn soft plastic waste into?
The report shows Gallagher's machinery processing soft plastics into resin pellets for new manufacturing.