Challenge
In NSW, nearly 90% of plastic waste is sent to landfills each year, with only 11% being recycled. Meanwhile, plastic consumption is on the rise, expected to increase by over 30% by 2040. This presents both a climate and environmental challenge and an economic opportunity within the context of a broader circular economy.
The NSW Plastics Action Plan defines ambitious plastics targets to be achieved by 2025 and 2030 such as tripling the plastics recycling rate by 2030.
Shyft Consulting worked with the NSW EPA to co-design a strategic pathway to achieve the targets focusing on plastic packaging.
Approach
Shyft has taken a data-driven and co-design approach with the plastics team to ensure successful modelling:
- We established a baseline projection for both plastic reduction and plastic recycling rates.
- We aligned on levers available for NSW to reduce and recycle plastic packaging – informed by global studies and magnitude benchmarks.
- We outlined policy options and assessed varying levels of coercion for each lever based on interviews with EPA stakeholders.
- We modelled 3 scenarios with different combinations of levers to assess the potential impact of plastic packaging on plastic targets.
- We recommended next steps for further implementation and governance to capture potential impact
Outcome
As a result, Shyft was able to provide the EPA with:
- A shared understanding of the projected plastic targets baseline based on the current program
- Alignment on the levers and level of coercion required to achieve an impact on the plastic targets
- NSW based magnitude data across levers to understand the impact per policy option
- A clear data-based strategic pathway to understand what it takes to achieve NSW plastic targets
- A lever impact model, iincluding scenario modeling that considers projected baseline, levers, coercion levels, and global impact benchmarks tailored to NSW.
