Soft plastics recycling

Not all soft plastics are the same. Only some types can be recycled into new products. The soft plastic that is accepted at the Resource Recovery Centre includes items such as:

YES - accepted soft plastics:

• Clean grocery and shopping bags (not woven or paper)
• Pallet wrap, shrink wrap, furniture wrap and builders' film
• Bubble wrap
• Zip-lock bags
• Mail satchels  

NO - not accepted:

• Coloured soft plastics
• Any food packaging (bread bags, frozen food bags, chip packets, pasta and rice bags, netted produce bags)
• Pet food bags
• Nappy wipes packets
• Rinsed yoghurt/baby food pouches
• Rigid or crinkly plastics (e.g. meat trays, berry containers – these go in your yellow lid recycling bin)
• Foiled sachets (e.g. flavour sachets, foil coffee bags)
• Compostable or biodegradable bags
• Heavily soiled plastics (food or other materials stuck to the soft plastics)
• Pool inflatables
• Vinyl packaging (e.g. from sheets or doonas)
• PE foam sheets

For more comprehensive information on what to do with your waste, check out our A to Z waste and recycling guide.

The major supermarkets Coles, Woolworths and Aldi have formed a Soft Plastic Taskforce which accepts food packaging and other soft plastics. 

Check the Woolworths, Aldi, and Coles websites for more information. 

Participating stores in Brimbank include:

• Taylors Lakes Woolworths (15 A/3 Melton Hwy, Taylors Lakes)
• Watergardens Woolworths (399 Melton Hwy, Sydenham) 

Soft plastics can take hundreds of years to break down in landfill and often end up in our oceans, harming wildlife.

Recycling soft plastics helps reduce this waste, protects the environment and turns rubbish into useful things like roads and furniture.

Recycling isn’t the full solution – soft plastics can only be recycled a limited number of times, sometimes only once.

The best way to help is by using less plastic in the first place. For the soft plastics you can’t avoid, this free recycling service is here to help.

All Brimbank residents can drop off their household soft plastics at the Resource Recovery Centre.

This service is for residential waste only. It's not available for businesses or commercial quantities.

To make drop-off easier for you and our recycling partners, please collect your soft plastics in one bag. This makes drop-off quick and tidy. It also helps stop lightweight plastics from blowing away during transport.

When collecting your soft plastics make sure they are clean and dry.

Then, bring the bag to the Resource Recovery Centre and follow directions for drop off..

Want to take it a step further? Wholly Shrink is a handy tool that helps you compact soft plastics to save space and stay organised before drop-off.

Bring your soft plastics to:

Brimbank Resource Recovery Centre
Stadium Drive, Keilor Park VIC 3042

Opening hours:
Monday to Friday: 9am - 4pm
Saturday: 9am - 1pm
Public holidays: 9am - 1pm (closed Christmas Day and New Year's Day)

Residential waste only. No trailer loads or commercial quantities.

No. Soft plastics are currently only accepted at the Resource Recovery Centre.

Soft plastics from Brimbank’s Resource Recovery Centre go to Close the Loop (CtL). This Australian company transforms waste into useful products like construction materials, street furniture, shopping trolleys and engineered asphalt additive – a special ingredient used to make stronger, longer-lasting roads.

This is part of a special agreement – called a circular contract – between Brimbank City Council and Close the Loop. It is the first project of its kind in metropolitan Melbourne. It guarantees that soft plastics are collected, recycled and reused in local projects.

One of the first achievements of this partnership was using recycled soft plastics to help build three roads in Brimbank.

By dropping off your soft plastics, you're not just cutting waste and helping the environment. You're also helping Brimbank build local circular economy solutions.