Deleted post above from when I tried to edit it to say it was a reply to vax2000, rather than just a general reply, but that didn’t work very well…
I reckon its just a pretence at recycling, but in reality is just a delay in them ending up in landfill.
Hiya @gordon
If you start a general reply and want it to be a specific reply just click the Reply button in the post you want to address. It will readdress the reply for you.
I had already posted before I realised, so went into edit and did as above, which is when my problems started 
This what happens to it…see paragraph halfway down.
Soft plastics are recycled and used to make moulded plastic such as fake wood and can be proceesed to make synthetic bags like the multiuse green (or other colour) shopping bags.
If one wants to look at Australia’s performance on waste and recycling, the Commonwealth Department of Environment and Energy produces the National Waste Report. Link to the report can be found here.
Most state governments also produce their own report and the Queensland Waste and Recycing Report can be found here.
After reading the reports I am more disheartened by the results. Of particular note is the confidence in the figures generated for the reports where in both they have poor confidence in the reported figures, from the Federal report comes this gem “However, analysis of the Qld data found significant data quality problems (see BE & AWE 2017 for details)”.
Poor data collection leads to results that are fudged. The aim must be to report figures so it looks good but that are in fact like digested food out of the rear end of a male bovine.
The problem with the data it is estimates based on known information, such as truck movement numbers or landfill airspace surveys. The waste industry doesn’t measure tonnages, unless the receiving sites have weighbridges or equipment with load cell tranducers. Most sites receiving waste or recycling materials have neither, so other known data is used to extrapolate estimated tonnages.
Also, the waste industry is disjoint from the packaging and manufacturing industry, so it is very difficult to know real recycling rates. Again these are estimated based on best available information, which is extrapolated to provide recovery and recycling rates. If the same methods are used from year to year, then trends can be determined and tge trends can be seen as more reliable indication of the situation than raw data.
Notwithstanding this, the data really shown the magnitude of what is occurring, rather than exactly what is occurring.
Such is enough to provide information for policy guidance and development, however, could also be manipulated to drive a particular agenda to push for a particular policy outcome.
This is why it is best to read the State and Commonwealth reports, as well as local government reports if available to determine if similar intrerpretation are given. If interpretations are wide apart, then the presented data and conclusions becomes more questionable.
There should be a national approach to SO MANY things: health, education, licences, qualifications, building regulation, road rules, … too many to list.
As long as the different levels of Government only think about themselves & their bailiwick, things will not improve.
… another challenge with the ‘national approach’ path is remote areas. People in the big smoke have (in theory) efficiency of volume and they wont want to subsidise us out in the sticks. Likewise we already pay a premium to live remote so paying more to fit in with a national approach isn’t going to fly. We’ve had some attempts at recycling and occasionally you’ll see a couple dozen crushed cars on a road train back-load heading south, but it costs big to tool up for full scale recycling when there’s only 28k people in a big town, and nothing bigger for a thousand miles - and costs a lot to ship it elsewhere … the only recycling that is really popular here is the ‘direct re-integration into the environment’ approach … down south I believe you call it ‘littering’.
In fairness, remote areas would be a tiny percentage of the overall population …
But remote areas are over weighted in the numbers of abandoned vehicles. Once the cost of recovering them exceeds the value of replacement, why bother. That equation is more common in the bush. As with the country as a whole, we ‘punch’ well above our weight in generating pollution because of our population distribution. Not to mention those localities that generate power with diesels.
Or not. Our whole town has been without power this morning … very green of them 
You could always try the Victorian approach , glass ,crush it and dump it, paper and plastic ,store it in a yard on the fringe of town and have an accidental fire every year or so, the real worry is aluminium cans covered with paint and printing the pollution and toxic fumes from recycling these is fierce.
The Victorian approach is “sweep it under the rug”, and maybe we’ll forget.
It looks like we’ll have to deal with recycling everything ourselves shortly, rather than shipping most of it to China
Waste should be chucked into the strip (open pit) mines! When full, cover with soil and plant grass and trees.
In Altona , Vic where I live , some of our most beautiful parks and nature reserves were formed just as you and your link described Phil . As @phb correctly points out this practice is now frowned upon as being a generator of green house gases ./
One of those situations where you are " damned if you do and damned if you don’t ."
The only problem is any organic materials (anything with carbon) turns into methane, which as a greenhouse gas is about 22 stronger than CO2. While some can be collected for energy generation, there are also uncontrolled fugitive emissions.
Technically almost everything can be used for something else, burnt as energy, resused, recycled or redirected into another manufacturing/process stream.
As such, it is possible to get close to zero waste (generation) which reduces reliance of the world’s finite resources.
In the case of parks creating methane, it seems they would want to be smoke free zones, lest the smoker go up in a flash of flame! I know, some might think they wouldn’t mind that, but it might also singe the grass …
I can’t help but thinking methane isn’t a good thing to breathe? (no fart jokes please, but possibly relevant) - there are stories of gas buildup in low areas that trap unsuspecting animals/people aren’t there?
Seems like a good idea but depending on the rubbish in the landfill it can and does have toxic leaching into the surrounding soils and water tables.
If it is ‘clean’ fill it isn’t such a huge concern but do you trust them to be just dumping ‘clean’ fill? From my experience I don’t.
Compared to the mine slag? Maybe better or maybe worse, but.
