Lake Macquarie council has approved an $8 million Downer Group plant to recycle waste materials into roads.

Materials such as soft plastics collected via the REDcycle program and toner collected from used printer cartridges through the Cartridges 4 Planet Ark (C4PA) recycling program will be used to produce the asphalt.

In Australia alone, more than 300,000 tonnes of soft plastic are dumped into landfill every year. TonerPlas offers an alternative use for valuable resources while also creating lower carbon, higher quality road surfaces.

For every one kilometre of road paved with TonerPlas, approximately 530,000 plastic shopping bag equivalents and waste toner from 12,500 printer cartridges will be reused.

Over 39 million cartridges have been collected via Cartridges 4 Planet Ark. All of this made possible by the participating manufacturers Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Konica Minolta and Kyocera who collectively take responsibility for the end life of their products.

A recent sustainability report by Planet Ark and HP found that half of Australian consumers and 44 per cent of businesses do not recycle printer ink and toner cartridges.

Join the C4PA campaign to recycle 41 million cartridges before the end of March 2019. Through the C4PA campaign you will be diverting valuable resources from landfill and contributing to innovation in recycling.

 

Positive action:

• If you are a business looking to get your used printer cartridges recycled for free, register for a workplace collection box through Cartridges 4 Planet Ark.
• Recycle your plastic bags and other soft plastics at REDcycle collection points.