Verra has issued Plastic Credits to the first Australian project registered with the Plastic Waste Reduction Program. The Far North Queensland Farm Plastics Project implements and scales up the collection of agricultural waste from banana farms by collecting plastic waste and delivering it to mechanical recyclers or sanitary landfills. This reduces the impact of plastic waste entering the Great Barrier Reef and the surrounding waterways and landscapes of Far North Queensland.
The sale of Plastic Credits enables the project to finance the collection of plastic waste from farms in areas where mandated waste management is either not in place or not enforced. This finance is critical in these areas where the high costs of waste collection and the absence of efficient systems for agricultural waste disposal mean that farmers are often leaving, burying, or burning their plastic waste, including produce-covers, polypipe and plastic twine, on farms, which pollutes the environment. The project expects to collect an average of 250 metric tonnes of agricultural plastic waste annually as Plastic Credit finance enables it to scale their operations over time.
Verra issued the project 32 Waste Collection Credits (WCCs) representing 32 metric tonnes of agricultural plastic waste collected between August 2019 – August 2021.