Australia\u2019s Unpackit Awards, an annual competition to determine the nation\u2019s best and worst packaging, has given the unenviable \u201cWorst Packaging\u201d prize to recently popularised plastic coffee cans.<\/p>\n
In an event brought over from New Zealand, and run by the Australian Marine Conservation Society, the Plastic Free Foundation, and WWF Australia, the award sees hundreds of nominations assessed by packaging, plastics, waste, and pollution experts for the respective best and worst categories.<\/p>\n
The winner, or loser, of the \u201cWorst\u201d award came after \u201cno shortage of problematic packaging\u201d, according to Unpackit. But the cans in question were chosen for the award be cause it represents \u201ceverything that\u2019s problematic with packaging in Australia\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re single-use and built for on-the-go consumption, making them high-risk for littering,\u201d Unpackit added. \u201cThey combine plastic and metal in a way that makes them unrecyclable and are also excluded from container deposit schemes, meaning there\u2019s nowhere obvious to put them when you\u2019re done and no financial incentive to return them.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, Unpackit claimed that they were \u201cunnecessary\u201d additions to cafes.<\/p>\n
\u201cMixed-material packaging contaminates every stream it touches in our yellow bins and ends up as waste anyway,\u201d Suzanne Toumbourou, CEO of the Australian Council of Recycling, added.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo genuinely reduce waste and improve resource efficiency, packaging must prioritise material reduction, maximise reuse, and be designed for recyclability so recycling can operate as a true remanufacturing supply chain.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s Unpackit Awards, an annual competition to determine the nation\u2019s best and worst packaging, has given the unenviable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44,347749],"class_list":["post-716624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news","tag-unpackit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}