An Adelaide City Council report has found pre-formed plastic packaging for medication is “unsuitable” for the organisation to recycle “at this time”, leaving one pharmacist footing a $277 weekly bill to divert the waste from landfill and questioning the council’s commitment to the circular economy.

A recent report by the Adelaide City Council administration found medical blister packs “unsuitable for inclusion” in the city’s work-in-progress recycling stations.

“’Hard to recycle items’ were investigated and deemed unsuitable for inclusion in a ‘recycling station’ at this time,” the report says, listing blister packs as the first item.

“100 per cent aluminium blister packs can be placed in yellow kerbside recycling bins if balled together with other aluminium items.

“It is much more difficult to recycle composite material items such as plastic and aluminium blister packs, [and] further investigation is required to understand recycling industry processes and outcomes.”

At the 9 February, 2022, council meeting area councillor and Greens affiliate Keiran Snape first introduced a motion asking the City of Adelaide to provide recycling drop-off bins at the Pirie Street Customer Centre and North Adelaide Community Centre for blister packs.

The aim was to alleviate the recycling burden of one North Adelaide ratepayer and chemist owner, Morag Horton, who was diverting the suburb’s blister packs from the dump at a personal cost of roughly $6000 per annum.

Horton — owner of Melbourne Street’s Terry White Chemmart — orders metre-tall cardboard collection boxes from US recycling business TerraCycle and fills them with her customer’s returned blister packs, with each box costing $277 each.

The original motion was amended by north ward councillor Mary Couros for the administration to instead investigate city recycling drop off points for blister packs and other hard-to-recycle items including batteries, polystyrene and small electronics, and produce the findings in a report.

Despite not offering immediate support, as desired by the original motion, the amended and carried proposal formally thanked Horton for her “community spirit and values” in providing the out-of-pocket service.

CityMag visited Horton in February to ask about the council’s decision to investigate recycling blister packs, and she was optimistic about the future

Horton told CityMag she was “extremely disappointed” with the result of the report.

“I haven’t seen a great uptake of the City of Adelaide in really being serious about [their] waste management strategy,” she said.

“Waste management has been an issue for me for the eight years that I’ve owned a business in the City of Adelaide and I haven’t seen any improvements in that period of time.”

When asked whether the community could recycle their own 100 per cent aluminium blister packs in the yellow bins, as per the results of the investigation, she said it would only account for one-third of her received waste – which has significantly increased of late.

“In the weeks after your article, we were collecting a box-full – so $270 worth a week, and our box was overflowing and our new stock hadn’t arrived yet,” Horton said.

“It’s become more of a financial burden for me.

“I’ve had people bringing foils from as far as Whyalla and Gawler, and someone brought me a garbage bag full.”

Horton said she would continue lobbying the Adelaide City Council for it to collect and divert the waste themselves, and would also apply for local grants to enable her to continue the service from her shop.

After CityMag highlighted Horton’s blister pack recycling efforts, she says she was inundated with new customers and soon filled up one waste box a week

The City of Adelaide’s Resource Recovery Action Plan (2020-2028) says it aims for the city council to be the first in Australia to achieve ‘zero avoidable waste to landfill’.

This aligns with the State Government’s definition of diverting all waste from landfill where it is “technologically, environmentally and economically practicable” to do so, the plan says.

Snape told CityMag he was disappointed with the report’s results, and would challenge the findings at the next council meeting.

“All we need to do is reach out to this company, get a couple of containers, and then put them in easy-accessible places,” he said.

“Unfortunately, what I think happened is the motion got so convoluted with all the recycling things, which are good, [but] it could have been a separate motion.

“Because the blister packs have been put in the too-hard basket, it’s been swamped by everything else, despite being the primary reason for my initial motion.”

When asked whether it was too cost-prohibitive for the City of Adelaide to recycle the pre-formed plastic packaging, Snape said he wasn’t one to go “throwing money around” but believed “it is a cost the council can and should bear for the future of our planet.”

Couros – the councillor who amended the original motion – said she noted the administration’s comments that more work was required to understand industry processes.

“I look forward to asking questions about this and finding out more tomorrow night at committee,” she said.

“Like everyone else on Council I am keen to see us do all we can to achieve our zero waste vision.”

The City of Adelaide did not respond to questions before deadline as to why the blister packs were deemed unsuitable for recycling.

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