Sustainable printing in Australia: the numbers behind the claims

If you print or convert packaging, or sell to someone who does, the National Packaging Targets are the benchmark every sustainability claim in this trade gets measured against. They were agreed in 2018, administered by the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), and due in 2025. The seventh annual data report, covering 2023-24, is now the scorecard at the deadline.

The scorecard at the 2025 deadline

Three of the four targets are measured as a share, and none of the three got there. The fourth, phasing out problematic single-use plastic packaging, is measured as a reduction against the 2017-18 baseline and reached a 46 per cent cut, further than any earlier year but still short of a phase-out.

The plastics number is the stark one: 20 per cent of plastic packaging recycled or composted, against a 70 per cent target, and barely moved from 16 per cent in 2017-18. The recyclability figure has actually gone backwards from its 88 per cent starting point. Recycled content is the near miss, 44 per cent against 50.

What recovery actually looks like, material by material

Australia placed 6.84 million tonnes of packaging on the market in 2023-24 (APCO quotes a plus or minus 10 per cent accuracy range), and 54 per cent of it by weight was paper and paperboard. The national post-consumer recovery rate was 59 per cent, up from 56 per cent the year before. But the average hides the spread that matters commercially.

The commercial reading: fibre-based packaging is the material the recovery system genuinely handles at scale, and flexible plastic is where the system fails hardest. If your work touches flexible plastic packaging, that 9 per cent is the number regulators are now organising around (more below).

"Paper recycling is up" and "paper recycling is down" are both true

Two official paper recovery figures circulate in this trade, and they measure different things. APCO's figure above, 66 per cent and rising, counts paper and paperboard packaging only. The federal environment department's National Waste and Resource Recovery Report 2024 puts the recovery rate for all scrap paper and cardboard, including newsprint, magazines and office paper, at 56 per cent in 2021-22, down from 68 per cent in 2016-17.

DCCEEW's own explanation is digitisation, not a recycling failure: annual consumption of newsprint and magazine material has fallen by 400,000 to 500,000 tonnes a year over the decade, and printing and writing papers by another 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes, and those were the grades with traditionally high recycling rates. Packaging papers grew strongly but not enough to offset the decline. So quote the right number for the claim you are making: a carton or box claim leans on the APCO packaging figure; a claim about paper recycling in general has to own the economy-wide trend. Note the reference years differ too: APCO's 66 per cent is 2023-24 data, DCCEEW's 56 per cent is 2021-22 data published in the 2024 report.

On the capacity side, the APCO report itself lists the recent fibre investments: Opal's Maryvale mill converted a paper machine to recycled containerboard grades in 2022, Opal Fibre Packaging opened a new Wodonga corrugating facility in 2023, and Visy installed a drum pulper at Coolaroo in 2023.

What is coming next: targets past 2025, EPR, and a soft plastics levy

APCO has confirmed the targets continue beyond 2025, with support from Australia's environment ministers, to keep the benchmark consistent while reform focuses on what is holding the system back; no new end date has been fixed. In parallel, APCO opened a member consultation in April 2025 on a stronger, industry-led extended producer responsibility (EPR) model, which would shift more of the recovery cost onto whoever places packaging on the market.

The first concrete piece of that machinery is soft plastics. In August 2025 the ACCC issued a draft determination proposing to authorise Soft Plastics Stewardship Australia (SPSA), a voluntary industry scheme whose initial members are Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, Nestlé, Mars and McCormick Foods, funded by a levy on participants based on the business-to-consumer soft plastic packaging they place on the market. The ACCC proposes an eight-year authorisation with reporting conditions. Its release carries the number that explains why the scheme exists:

One more regulatory date already in force: since the 2024 waste report's reporting period, Australia has regulated exports of scrap paper and cardboard under a licensing and declaration scheme, with licensing mandatory from 1 October 2024. If your business trades in recovered paper, that scheme now sits between you and the export market.

How to verify a green claim before you print it

The citation habit works in both directions; these are the registers we use and that you can use on any supplier claim:

• FSC stock claims: look the certificate up in FSC's public certificate search. Note FSC's trademark rules changed on 1 July 2026: FSC-STD-50-001 V3-0 is now in effect, with certificate holders given until 31 December 2028 to transition.
• PEFC/Responsible Wood claims: the Australian scheme's chain-of-custody register lives with Responsible Wood, and the standard underneath it (AS/NZS 4708) is under revision with public comment open until 7 August 2026.
• Carbon-neutral claims: the Australian Government certification is Climate Active; certified entities measure, reduce and offset emissions and pass independent validation. A "carbon neutral" claim without a certification behind it is just copywriting.