Federal, state and territory environment ministers will meet in Adelaide on Friday to decide the future of recycling in Australia and discuss urgent action on plastic pollution.

The Boomerang Alliance is calling on the ministers to take action on the proposed ban on the export of plastic waste. Paper, glass and tyres are also in its sights.

The alliance wants the ministers to commit to invest in domestic recycling.

Alliance director Jeff Angel said Australians had "been deluded for years" with claims about waste being recycled.

"We need to take full responsibility for the cycle of waste," Mr Angel said.

Mr Angel's comments follow Greenpeace revealing that only 9 per cent of plastic waste was recycled worldwide, 12 per cent was incinerated and 79 per cent was dumped in landfills or the natural environment.

It refers to this broken system as the "recycling myth".

Mr Angel said solving the recycling crisis was "not just an economic issue".

"It's about taking responsibility to stop dumping waste overseas," he said.

Recycling waste in Australia to make new products would "genuinely save resources and help stop plastic pollution of the oceans".

As well as Malaysia, Greenpeace said plastic waste from Western countries was shipped to places such as Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and India.

"Once one country regulates plastic waste imports, it floods into the next unregulated destination," it said.

It said illegal operations had led to discarded plastic being burnt and dumped in the natural environment, poorly regulated landfills and neighbourhoods.

Some Third World governments have cracked down on the problem amid public outrage and concerns about human health and the environment. This has reportedly led the problem to be shifted elsewhere to countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya and Senegal.

In August, COAG [Council of Australian Governments] leaders agreed Australia should establish a timetable to ban the export of plastic, paper, glass and tyre waste.

They also agreed to build "Australia's capacity to generate high value recycled commodities and demand".

They tasked environment ministers to "advise on a proposed timetable and response strategy following consultation with industry and other stakeholders".

This is what Friday's meeting will deal with.

The Newcastle Herald revealed last month that Hunter councils do not know where plastic waste ends up.

Hunter Resource Recovery - which manages kerbside recycling for Lake Macquarie, Cessnock, Maitland and Singleton councils - had believed plastic waste from this region was being sent to Malaysia for legal recycling.

But the company involved, Polytrade, told the Herald that it had "not exported plastics to Malaysia since October 2018".

Solo Resource Recovery, which is the waste contractor for Hunter and Newcastle councils and subcontracts business to Polytrade, attributed this to a misunderstanding and an error in reports on the matter.

This plastic waste dilemma has become more apparent since the Chinese government banned imports of plastic waste in January last year under its China National Sword Policy.

The decision threw the recycling industry into chaos.

Lisa Wriley, a campaigner for the Boomerang Alliance and Total Environment Centre, said Friday's meeting of environment ministers was crucial.

"We're calling on them to be really specific about the impending ban on exports."

Ms Wriley said the ban must ensure that "we don't send any plastic waste to overseas countries".

"To do that, we need to invest in local domestic recycling and manufacturing," she said.

Concerns have been raised that a plastic recycling industry would not be viable in Australia because of competition from Asia, where wages are cheaper.

"If you're going to ban the export of plastics, you have to also ban the import of plastics," Hunter Resource Recovery chief executive Roger Lewis said recently.

Mr Wriley agreed that "a big change is going to be needed".

"It's going to need strategic investment from government at all levels to make sure it happens."

The Boomerang Alliance is calling for a plastic bag ban and container deposit scheme in every state and a national phase-out of thick plastic bags by 2021.

It also wants a phase-out of single use (non-compostable) takeaway packaging, including coffee cups/lids, straws, cups, containers, cutlery, bags and plastic bottles by 2021.

It also wants support for a National Plastic Pollution Reduction Strategy to attack other sources of plastic harm.

The problems with waste put in yellow-lidded bins in the Hunter was made clear in a Maitland City Council submission to a parliamentary inquiry last year.

"There is great uncertainty as to what happens to the recyclables once they have left Australia," the submission said.

"It is pertinent to establish whether they are indeed recycled, whether they are used in waste to energy facilities or whether they are simply landfilled.

"It is also crucial to have certainty that the recyclables generated in Australia are managed in an environmentally and socially responsible manner in destination countries."

The submission added that Maitland council "feels reluctant at present to provide information to the community, schools and other interested parties on what happens to recyclables collected in the city".

"It is considered irresponsible to move recyclables offshore only to meet the recycling targets set by governments, without knowing the destiny of the products once the recyclables have left Australia."

This led to unsustainable practices including "export of recyclables overseas that cannot be verified or traced."

The Maitland council submission said markets for most recyclables in Australia were "unable to absorb the quality of recyclables collected".

It added that incentives must be created to "establish sustainable markets in Australia for recyclable products and subsidies for end users to use the recycled materials or, as a minimum, ensure that all recyclables exported are managed in an environmentally and socially responsible manner".

Greenpeace Malaysia Campaigner Heng Kiah Chun said it was clear that "recycling alone cannot fix our plastic pollution problem fast enough".

Modelling estimated that there were five trillion pieces of plastic in the oceans - enough to circle the Earth more than 400 times. This does not include pieces on the seabed or beaches.

"This issue needs to be tackled at the source," Mr Chun said.

"Multinationals need to reduce their production of single-use plastic, so that countries like Malaysia do not end up on the receiving end."