Are Bag in Box refill pouches kerbside recyclable?Updated a month ago
TL;DR: Roll’n’Recycle pouches are gone. Refills now ship in a fully recyclable cardboard box plus a lightweight pouch. Less plastic overall, box goes in kerbside recycling. The inner plastic bladder in our Bag-in-Box is made from PP (polypropylene) and is recyclable, but it needs to go through a soft-plastics recycling stream (not your normal kerbside bin).
Rinse it, remove the tap, deflate and drop it in a soft-plastics collection point. The outer carton can go in your cardboard recycling.
Short summary
Our Bag-in-Box uses a polypropylene (PP) bladder. We’ve worked with a Melbourne recycling provider who has successfully processed this PP material (the bladder) back into usable oil, showing the material can enter circular recycling pathways.
How you can recycle your Bag-in-Box
- Empty & rinse: Pour out any remaining product and give the bladder a quick rinse so it’s reasonably clean. Make several cuts (~4 should do it) into the plastic bag to help with water flow when rinsing.
- Remove the tap: Detach the tap/spout. At this time, this component is not able to be recycled.
- Deflate & fold: Squeeze out air and fold the bladder so it fits in a soft-plastics bin.
- Drop it off: Put the bladder in a soft-plastics collection bin (in-store trials or council collections). The cardboard outer box should be flattened and put in kerbside paper/cardboard recycling.
Where to drop off soft plastics
- Many soft-plastic recycling schemes run via supermarket collection bins (trial programs are currently live in select Woolworths stores and other retail trials).
- Some local councils are piloting kerbside soft-plastic collections, check with your council to see if your area is included.
- If there’s no local soft-plastics drop-off, keep the bladder dry and store until a nearby collection is available.
Why this matters
Because the bladder is PP, it’s a valuable plastic feedstock. This has been tested and confirmed to be able to reconstitute, which demonstrates a practical recycling route beyond landfill. However, this requires specialist processing, that’s why we ask customers to use designated soft-plastics collection streams rather than putting the bladder in general kerbside bins.
Good to know
- Do not place heavily contaminated bladders (full of product residue) into soft-plastic bins. Contamination can cause entire batches to be rejected.
- Retailers and the industry are running trials to scale up collection and processing, see Woolworths' trial details for participating store locations and what’s accepted.