New funding to increase Victoria’s recycling capacity and capability
The Victorian recycling sector is at a pivotal time in its history – with waste export bans and increased local recycling, there is an immediate need to process and recycle more materials across the state. The opportunity is ripe for businesses and councils to amplify existing, or step into, projects in this space.
Our new funding will support Victoria’s transition to a circular economy by partnering with organisations to deliver new and upgraded recycling infrastructure and increase Victoria’s capacity and capability to recover high quality materials.
$37.9 million is currently available to industry and local government for this round of the Recycling Victoria – Recycling Modernisation Fund. In addition, the Victorian government is releasing a separate funding stream providing $13.3 million funding for Round 2 of the Recycling Victoria Infrastructure fund.
The Recycling Victoria – Recycling Modernisation Fund is jointly funded with the Australian Government. The Australian Government is contributing almost $19 million in this new round of funding as part of its investment of over $190 million to expand Australia’s capacity to sort, process and remanufacture recycled materials to respond to the national waste export bans.
Victorian Government funding for these programs is offered through Recycling Victoria, the Victorian Government's $380 million action plan and investment that will transform the state’s recycling sector, create thousands of jobs and set Victoria up for a more sustainable future.
Action on waste is needed at every scale. These programs are an important piece of the circular economy puzzle: improving our infrastructure to ensure we are getting more value from our resources.
Materials recycling infrastructure opportunities
Two funding opportunities are now open:
- Circular Economy Recycling Modernisation Fund
- Circular Economy Infrastructure Fund: Materials.
These support Australian businesses, international businesses, Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and local government for projects that build Victoria’s capacity to recover high quality materials.
Circular Economy Recycling Modernisation Fund
The fund aims to address the challenges and gaps in domestic resource recovery capability and capacity in response to the national waste export bans.
Funding is available to projects that will address the challenges of the national waste export bans for:
- mixed plastics that are not of a single resin/polymer type and/or further sorting, cleaning and processing is required before use in re-manufacturing
- single resin/polymer plastics that have not been re-processed (e.g. cleaned and baled PET bottles)
- mixed and unsorted paper and cardboard
- unprocessed glass, in a whole or broken state (both formed packaging and flat sheet glass)
- all whole used tyres, including baled tyres, but not including bus, truck and aviation tyres exported for re-treading to a verified re-treading facility.
It will fund:
- building or upgrading infrastructure
- improving processing capacity
- increasing use of recycled materials in manufacturing or infrastructure.
The program will position Victoria as a south-eastern Australian hub for national waste and resource recovery infrastructure, with the capacity to process waste streams from Victoria and other states. This will boost our local industry, create jobs and strengthen our recycling system so it can meet domestic and international challenges.
This new round is funded by the Australian Government’s Recycling Modernisation Fund in partnership with the Victorian Government.
Circular Economy Infrastructure Fund: Materials
Funding is available for projects that improve or increase reprocessing, remanufacturing and end-market capacity for:
- paper and cardboard
- plastics
- glass
- tyres
- organics
- textiles.
Funded projects will support the delivery of the Recycling Victoria policy and achieve state priorities for the resource recovery sector by:
- increasing local recovery and reprocessing of priority materials
- increasing the use and market demand of recovered materials in remanufacturing
- reducing the amount and environmental impact of waste going to landfill.
Both funds use the same application form. Sustainability Victoria will determine which fund projects are eligible for and assessed under, in consultation with the Australian Government.
Applications close 11:59 pm, 7 May 2021.