The Boomerang Alliance said that 320,000 fewer tonnes of bottles, cans and plastic packaging were recycled than industry statistics suggested, and based its own 38% recycling figure on processing data from recycling stations.
But industry groups such as the Australian Packaging Covenant dispute this assertion, claiming that 52% of beverage containers were recycled during the last financial year.
"The data confirms beverage containers are our biggest problem, with only 38% recycled, some 10% less than previously claimed,'' the Boomerang Alliance’s national convenor, Jeff Angel, told the paper.
He added: ''This means eight billion containers are being littered or landfilled in Australia every year, or 21m per day, a dreadful waste.''
Insisting that there was no “black hole” in its data, the Australian Food and Grocery Council told the newspaper that the alliance’s methodology was misleading since it focused on beverage containers alone to the detriment of other packaging categories.