“In some cases that [recycled] material can be more expensive than virgin material, and unless there are mandates, it’s just not going to be used,” De Wit said.

Visy has a stake in the debate as a dominant player across the supply chain, with recycling collection, processing and packaging operations.

Plibersek has been threatening to introduce recycling and packaging regulation since 2022, but is yet to do so. She told the roundtable that getting state and territory governments to agree was difficult.

“With kerbside collection in particular, I can tell you getting state and territory environment ministers, who all think their system is the best system and if there’s any change the Commonwealth government should pay for it, to agree to a bit of harmonisation is not easy,” Plibersek said.

The issue was discussed at the national meeting of Australian environment ministers in June, and it is expected that governments will release advice to industry by the end of 2024. In late November, Australia will be part of United Nations talks in Korea pushing for a global agreement to prevent plastic pollution.

Australia has a target of 70 per cent of plastic being diverted from landfill by 2025, but based on 2021-22 figures, it is still sitting at 20 per cent.

Justin Merrell, the group environment director for beverage giant Lion, said harmonisation was more important than getting a perfect system, pointing out that for his company to put out a new beverage on the market, it would have to register it in seven different recycling schemes, each with different monitoring and compliance requirements.

“It really shouldn’t be a race to be the best, it should be a race to standardise because it just creates so much inefficiency in the system,” Merrell said. “We need rules, not guidelines – surely we’re done with guidelines?”

Peter West, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners vice president and general manager Australia, Pacific and Indonesia, said mandating businesses to separate their rubbish was an important part of the picture, especially for a business such as his, where half of products were sold for consumption outside the home.

Adam Pulford, the Greens mayor of Merri-bek, north of Melbourne, said local governments were working hard to increase recycling, but manufacturers needed to do more.

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“The best way to deal with waste is not to create it in the first place, so industry as well as governments play a huge role in this, including mandates to remove things from the kerbside system altogether,” Pulford said.

“We believe that onus needs to be on the companies creating the products, not the people consuming it.”

Plibersek said she had spoken with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission about “getting out of the way” to allow businesses to collaborate on recycling. She said the watchdog was open to that request, and she was happy to be the intermediary if needed.