18/09/2026
Our Hub is proud to collect soft plastics for recycling - each week our members drop off their soft plastics when they pick up their orders - each week we almost fill our 240L bin!
REAL PLASTIC ACTION - NO GREENWASHING
Let's talk about the giant, plastic-wrapped elephant in the supermarket aisle.
For years, you did the right thing. You washed out your bread bags, meticulously scrunched up your chip packets, and hauled them to the supermarket drop-off bins. You trusted the system. And then, the REDcycle scheme dramatically imploded, revealing that over 11,000 tonnes of our supposedly "recycled" plastics were just rotting in secret warehouses across the country.
Total betrayal, right?
Well, grab a cuppa, because it just got worse. Last week, the suits in Canberra quietly shelved long-promised national packaging laws. These laws would have finally forced massive corporations and supermarkets to take responsibility for the mountains of plastic they pump into our lives.
The government's excuse for bailing? They reckon making big food corps clean up their act would "exacerbate cost-of-living pressures" and drive up your grocery bills.
At Box Divvy, we officially call BS on that. We manage to keep your produce up to 30% cheaper than the major supermarkets and we give a damn about the planet. You don't have to choose between inexpensive food and protecting the planet, unless your business model cares more for making a quick dollar.
We Didn't Wait for the Politicians
While the big players passed the buck, we decided to just get on with it. We teamed up with RecycleSmart who are logistics legends and who actually know how to track waste and launched our own community-led soft plastics rescue mission.
We started with a cheeky little trial in late 2024 down in the Southern Highlands. Across just six Hubs, our members casually saved 750 kilograms of plastic from landfill in a matter of months.
Turns out, when you give people a system that isn't built on lies, they jump at it.
Thanks to that massive success (and a handy 50% co-funding grant from the NSW EPA), we rolled out those beautiful purple-lidded, 240-litre bins across NSW and ACT. Today, the numbers speak for themselves:
90% of Box Divvy Hubs across NSW and the ACT now have an active soft plastics bin.
Our community is diverting to date 20 tonnes, that's about 700 kilos a week of soft plastics from landfill. On track for 35 tonnes for the year.
Every single batch is weighed, tracked, and shipped directly to EPA-approved processors. No stockpiles. No smoke and mirrors.
The Ultimate Flex: We Buy Our Own Crap Back
Here is why REDcycle actually failed: collecting plastic is useless if no one wants to buy the recycled material at the end. The big supermarkets loved the PR of the collection bins, but they refused to close the loop.
So, we did it ourselves.
The scrunched-up plastics you drop at your local Hub are sent to a facility in Victoria, where they are washed, shredded, and melted down into high-quality, food-grade plastic resin.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
We are doing this because waiting for massive corporations to adopt more sustainable practices is a waste of time.
And let's be real here with the stakes are getting higher than just cluttered landfills. A recent, report in The Guardian by Pippa Neill reveals that microplastics are actively poisoning the agricultural soils that grow our food.
A major five-year European study found microplastics in every single agricultural field tested across 11 countries, warning that these tiny particles act like a "Trojan horse" in our dirt. They don't just sit there; they adsorb and deliver toxic cocktails of pesticides, pathogens, and heavy metals directly into the soil microbiome, disrupting vital nutrient cycles and even stunting the growth of crops like lettuce.
They create "plastisphere" hotspots that actually accelerate the spread of antibiotic-resistant genes. When we bypass the supermarkets and properly rescue our soft plastics, we aren't just cleaning up our streets we are actively defending our soil, our food supply, and our health from a toxic, invisible invasion of microplastics.
What we are proving right now with every tonne of plastic we save is that community power actually works. By decentralising the system and taking ownership of our own supply chain, we've built a circular economy right in our own backyards. We are showing the government and the supermarket duopoly that it's not "too hard" or "too expensive."
To every Hubster and member scrunching their plastics every week: you are absolute legends. You are sticking it to a broken system and proving there is a better way.
Keep scrunching, keep bringing it to the Hub, and let's keep changing the food system one recycled bread bag at a time.
