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Every morning, Elisha and Matt Nettleton leave their small country town to tackle a massive plastic problem that for decades has been buried deep underground.
On the edge of country towns right around Australia about 100,000 tonnes, equal to 100 million kilograms, of agricultural plastic is buried in landfill every year.
It's the waste most of us never see and wouldn't know of: silage wrap, baling twine and grain tarps that could cover half a football field.
Plastic bulker bags used for seed and fertiliser bound for landfill at a Swan Hill Rural Council tip. They're embarking on a circular economy pilot project for ag-plastics. (Supplied: Ron Gibbs)
This used plastic drip line was buried at landfill. It's used to irrigate vines and fruit trees in northern Victoria. (Supplied: Ron Gibbs, Swan Hill Rural City Council)
70 metre long grain bags used on farm are taken to a rural tip and buried in landfill. (Supplied: Ron Gibbs, Swan Hill Rural City Council)
Plastic film protects silage hay delivered to farms. After use, it's often illegally burnt or buried on farm. (ABC South West Vic: Emily Bissland)
Rolled grain tarpaulins awaiting recycling in Hamilton. These can cost over $3,000 and are used to cover stored grain in bulk pits. (ABC South West Vic: Emily Bissland)
A grain tarp is shredded at Sustainable Plastic Solutions in Hamilton, Victoria. (ABC South West Vic: Emily Bissland)
It's this waste that gets the Nettletons out of bed every morning.
"Some days it is really dirty work and you think, 'Why?', but we push through because we know we're doing the right thing," Ms Nettleton said.
She and her husband live amongst the natural beauty of western Victoria, but now spend their days in their industrial start-up, a shed filled with the loud hum of heavy machinery.
It's here that they begin the gritty work of recycling for another day.
Loading...In just over two years, their small Hamilton-based business, Sustainable Plastic Solutions, has reclaimed 3,000 tonnes of plastic and has created a world-leading closed-loop circular economy for grain tarpaulins.
They've just received a federal grant for matched funding of $9 million that will expand their operations to 16,000 tonne capacity per year and should enable them to tackle the so-far-unsolvable problem of recycling silage wrap.
But in the beginning, it was all financed by local farmers.
What's a circular economy?
Simply put, a circular economy means that when a product is created, there is no rubbish at the end of its use.
The product is used, recycled and manufactured back into the same product again, or sometimes transformed into other useful products.
Circular economies are still fairly rare, but the Nettletons built their entire business model on being a key part of a circular economy for grain tarps — vast sheets of plastic that can weigh between 250 and 600 kilograms when empty.
They collaborate with companies like GrainCorp and Gale Pacific that have learnt to put a dollar value on sustainable processes in order to keep customers.
At the plant in Hamilton, tarps from all across the eastern seaboard are churned into tiny plastic beads — resin which the Nettletons sell to make the new grain tarps.
"We've turned grain tarps into grain tarps, and we've gotten back a grain tarp that we recycled," Ms Nettleton said.
"It went on a pit, and now it's come back to us again for recycling. So the circle has been completed twice, which is really exciting."
Ms Nettleton said a big surprise since starting the business was the tonnes of pre-consumer plastic — the plastics created for supermarkets that never made it there.
This includes things like bottles of shampoo or dishwashing liquid that never get filled or sold because of a marketing reboot, or labels discarded due to a large-scale misprint.
"The waste is just mind-boggling. It it is actually shocking. We had four B-doubles of unused bottles arrive here about six weeks ago."
Just three years ago, the venture was nothing more than a pipe dream, until one autumn night in the Bunyip Hotel, when a bunch of local farmers decided to dip into their retirement funds to make it happen.
Someone should recycle those
After immigrating from Canada to Melbourne, the Nettletons found themselves escaping to Cavendish every weekend, visiting friends.
"We would see the grain tarps over the bunkers as you drive through from Ballarat," Ms Nettleton said.
"Matt would always say, 'Those are made of the best plastic, they need to be recycled, and I'm going to do it one day.'"
Ms Nettleton was working as a STEM teacher in Melbourne and her husband worked in the plastic recycling industry.
Eventually, they realised their hearts were in Cavendish and uprooted their lives.
"We just dropped everything, we just left with no jobs, no prospects and abandoned the city," Ms Nettleton said, laughing.
"And then we bought a pub, which is probably not the best financial decision."
A night at the Bunyip Hotel
The risk paid off. As the new pub licensees, the Nettletons had a direct line to Cavendish chitter-chatter.
"When you own a pub, there's no secrets, everybody knows what you're up to, everyone talks about their aspirations," Ms Nettleton said.
"Matt started talking about his plans for this recycling business, and people started showing a lot of interest in it."
But the Nettletons knew the recycling industry had a bad reputation.
"People think you're using thousands of litres of water and there's fumes, but there's not if it's done properly," Ms Nettleton said.
So one April night in 2022, they held a town meeting to present their business plan.
"We brought them all into the pub, there's nothing worse than not being ahead of rumour," Ms Nettleton said.
At the end of the presentation, they were surprised when people approached them about seed funding the business.
"We were kind of gobsmacked," she said
"We bought the machinery that night, after that meeting."
Early on, five farming families ended up investing to get the recycling plant off the ground. Ms Nettleton said without that seed funding from farmers, the business wouldn't have happened.
"When you're starting out, banks don't touch you. The government doesn't touch you until you've been running for X number of years. You think you're going to have to go to a venture capital company in the city," she said.
"But this was literally done off the backs of local people."
'Let's get on with it'
The Nettletons' ultimate goal is to recycle silage wrap and that goal is what convinced local sheep farmers, John and Joan Lyons, to dip into their retirement fund and invest in a recycling plant.
"We had a lot of plastic from the silage wrap, and the other alternative, the EPA frowns upon it," Mr Lyons said.
The EPA monitors the illegal but common farming practice of burning plastic waste on farms, often at dusk to avoid detection.
"It's terrible stuff," Mrs Lyons said.
"We decided, well, if no one does it, it's never gonna happen. So let's get on with it."
Another early investor, Roger Haldane, said a long career in fishing and farming had inspired his hatred of plastic.
"Farmers have been forced into using plastics, to cater for the population," he said.
"The time's come where we can't just step over it, it's a problem that we've got to deal with."
Like these farmers, the Nettletons' ultimate goal is to recycle silage wrap and turn it back into the same product, manufactured here in Australia.
But silage wrap has proved to be one of the most difficult products to recycle.
"We had no idea how complex the silage wrap problem was, which probably explains why no one else is doing it," Ms Nettleton said.
"But we love a challenge."
The Nettletons believe that equipment bought with the recent federal grant and supply chain connections via Sustainability Victoria will mean they will soon achieve another world first, and next thing on the list is to set up a second pre-consumer plastic recycling plant in Northern America.
Why it's important to care
Ms Nettleton says that, although you won't find her or her husband on the picket line, they're grateful to the decades of people who have fought for the environment.
"At heart, we're very environmentally minded, we don't have the time to lobby government or corporations. But people who are doing that frontline stuff are super critical," she said.
She credits the environmental movement with fostering the perfect climate for a company like hers to be able to thrive in a profit-driven market.
"Companies now more than ever feel they have to do the right thing by the environment, otherwise they will lose customer base.
"They feel that pressure, and that's awesome."