Snackbrands Australia, the manufacturer behind popular chip brands including Thins, CCs and Cheezels, has finished the first stage of its trial at Viva Energy’s Geelong refinery, marking a significant shift in how the food industry approaches packaging waste.

The refinery, which normally produces soft plastics using fossil fuels, trialled replacing crude oil with used cooking oil at the start of this year. Approximately 120 tonnes of waste oil was imported from Snackbrands Australia’s Sydney facility for the pilot program.

The used cooking oil, which would typically be destined for animal stock feed or exported offshore for biodiesel production, was instead transformed into food-grade plastic through a process involving heating and conversion into bio-based pallets before being made into packaging.

The trial produced 100 tonnes of soft plastic from the 120 tonnes of cooking oil, resulting in 15 million packets—an Australian first that could reshape the nation’s approach to sustainable packaging.

Reducing emissions and fossil fuel dependence

Snackbrands Australia innovation and sustainability director Tracey Seager says the initiative helped reduce the company’s reliance on virgin plastics while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“For us, the exciting thing about the used cooking oil into packaging is it means that anything that we can send there, that would’ve gone to those other areas,”

“It means we’re importing less fossil fuels or less tankers of oil coming into the ports in Australia,” she said.

Viva Energy said the process could significantly reduce carbon emissions from production compared with traditional crude oil methods. The company produces approximately 80,000 tonnes of plastic annually for use in food packaging, bank notes, takeaway containers and face masks.

The energy company plans to reduce crude oil in its plastic production process by incorporating used cooking oils and plastic pyrolysis oil—made from plastics reheated at extremely high temperatures—within the next five to 10 years.

Call for government support to scale initiative

Viva Energy Australia’s sales and commercial manager James Harrington said the company was looking to expand the initiative but needed more support.

“We are looking at other opportunities to offer bio-circular plastic. There is a lot of used cooking oil that’s collected in Victoria that can be used for the same application,” he said.

“It takes investment, collection, legislation and support from the government around mandated content for recycling targets.”

End-of-life disposal remains a challenge

Despite the environmental benefits of the production process, Mr Harrington acknowledged that recycling the cooking oil-based packaging remained problematic, with current options limited to landfill disposal.

He suggested plastic pyrolysis as one potential solution to avoid landfill and said the company was investigating alternative disposal methods.

“We’re looking to develop a way to dispose of it in a bag in normal recycling or take it back to a store,” Mr Harrington said.

He said the company was investigating the soft plastic’s integrity and had so far not found it to have adverse effects on the environment.

Expert cautions on consumer confusion

Deakin University sustainability senior lecturer Trevor Thornton said creating a closed-loop system was necessary to reduce the volume of waste going to landfill and its associated greenhouse gas emissions.

But he warned that clear consumer communication was essential to prevent contamination of existing recycling streams.

“I’d be more concerned about the community putting these types of materials into recycling streams, thinking it’s plastic and it can be recycled and therefore contaminating it,” Dr Thornton said.

Dr Thornton also called for a broader focus on reducing packaging volumes altogether, regardless of the material used.

“You go to buy something, chips or whatever, and the packaging is twice the size of the actual content because it looks like you’re getting a lot of food,” Dr Thornton said.

“So we’ve got to look at all ways of trying to reduce the amount of packaging, regardless of what it’s made of.”

The new packaging is expected to appear in stores next year, marking the first commercial application of the technology in Australia.