Planet Ark said that since the program’s inception a total of 51.7 million cartridges had been collected, of which 50.6 million had been recycled with zero waste to landfill.

Loading

Close the Loop chief executive officer Joe Foster said he expected the facility to be up and running “within the next few months”.

“We took immediate action at the time of the fire to keep taking cartridges in. We check them in, sort and send back to the original equipment manufacturer, harvest for parts and then recycle into plastics and metals as the last resort,” he said.

Foster said Planet Ark was just one program the company recycled for.

“The business was built on the brand promise of zero waste to landfill and has been practising this for the past 21 years,” he said.

Loading

A spokesman for Close the Loop clarified that the company was not storing 1.1 million cartridges, as Planet Ark had initially claimed.

He said that while the fire had hit TonerPlas production, other parts of the facility were running and it continued to process 16,000 printer parts a day.

Meanwhile, consumers looking to recycle their soft plastics have been told to dump their bags in the bin.

REDcycle was the only program in the country that invited consumers to drop off shopping bags, pet-food bags, ice-cream wrappers, bubble wrap and frozen-food packaging for recycling at supermarket giants. Its failure has been met with calls by government figures for urgent intervention in the recycling industry.

Loading

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said on Wednesday that the problems facing the recycling program were “unfortunate”.

REDcycle, which collected 5 million plastic items a day or 7000 tonnes a year, had become almost entirely dependent on Close the Loop to process its stock as the industry found it increasingly difficult to find financially viable methods of converting soft plastic into usable materials.

Victorian Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said she and her counterparts from around Australia, including Plibersek, discussed the issue of plastic pollution and recycling at a meeting last month.

She said national solutions were needed and urged supermarket chains to reduce their plastic use.

“Woolworths and Coles ... need to share some of the responsibilities of the problems that exist right now. Any good corporate citizen would do that,” she said.

NSW Environment Minister James Griffin flagged on Wednesday the need for potential multistate intervention and said he had contacted the NSW Environment Protection Authority, Victorian EPA and Recycling Victoria to better understand the situation.

With Paul Sakkal

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.