No joke but recycling was a bit of a red button issue with our people over the Christmas/New Year break. That’s because just before the end of 2022, it was revealed that Australia’s largest plastic bag recycling program REDcycle had secretly stockpiled hundreds of millions of bags dropped off by Coles and Woolies customers. So if you’re one of those who had been trying to do your bit by taking your soft plastics to the major supermarkets for recycling, you’ll be interested to hear the program was declared kaput yesterday after failing to pay storage fees for the mountains of waste. The supermarkets say that doesn’t change their ​​plan to rescue the scheme, saying the “stockpiles will be responsibly managed for the best possible environmental outcome.” Prior to its messy end, REDcycle claimed to have recycled more than 5.4 billion soft plastic items collected from 2,000 supermarkets nationwide.