Insulation waste · what actually happens to it
Every batt job I’ve done leaves a pile of plastic behind. Here’s where it actually goes.
I’m Peter Johnson, a Brisbane insulation contractor since 1986. Watch the video below and you’ll see exactly what a batt removal job leaves behind: bagged fibreglass batts carted off site with nothing to do with them but dump them. Cellulose Fibre Insulation runs a different path from the bag going in to the bag coming back out, and this page walks through why.
The plastic waste left behind by a fibreglass batt job
The plastic bags carted off site and dumped from a batt job — nothing you can do with them, unlike our reusable cellulose bags.
Read the transcript
This is the waste from batt jobs — all the plastic bags carted off site and dumped, with nothing you can do with them. Our cellulose comes in reusable bags with no waste plastic, which is a lot more environmentally friendly.
What a batt removal job actually leaves behind
Old fibreglass batts don’t come out clean. They come out as a pile of bagged plastic.
Pull old fibreglass batts out of a roof and they’re rolled up and bagged for the trip down the ladder. Loose glass fibre floating around a work site isn’t something you leave open to the air. Every one of those bags is plastic, and every one of them is heading to the same place: off site and into general waste. There’s no second use for a bag of degraded fibreglass batts, no program I’ve found that takes them back, and no way to send them anywhere except the tip.
That’s not a one-off on a bad job. It’s every fibreglass batt removal I’ve ever done, in forty years on roofs.
A skip bin filled with old pink and yellow fibreglass batts pulled out during a removal job — Strathpine. Every bag in a bin like this ends the same way, at the tip.
Two lots of plastic, not one
The plastic problem starts on install day, not just on removal day.
Fibreglass batts arrive on site compressed and wrapped in plastic packaging, one pack at a time. Each pack gets torn open and the wrap gets binned as the batts go in, so a full house of batts is a full house of plastic wrap in the skip before a single batt has even settled. Years later, when those batts are pulled out again, they get bagged in plastic a second time for the trip to the tip.
I’ve spent forty years installing and removing insulation across South East Queensland and Northern NSW, and I’ve never found a facility that takes either lot of plastic back. Both trips end at general waste. That’s the state of it, not a worst-case example.
Plastic-wrapped rolls of new glasswool batts stacked in a shipping container. Every one of those wraps comes off and goes in the bin before the batt itself ever reaches a roof.
Bag in, bag out, same bag
Our cellulose comes in reusable bags, not single-trip plastic.
Cellulose Fibre Insulation is delivered to a job in bags that are built to be refilled and run through the factory again, rather than torn open once and thrown away. The same bag can do the job hundreds of times before it’s retired, so a house full of cellulose doesn’t leave a house full of plastic wrap in the skip the way a house full of batts does.
We can say that with confidence because we manufacture Cellulose Fibre Insulation ourselves at our own factory in Tiaro. The bags come back to us, get refilled, and go back out on the next job.
Where the fibre itself comes from
It’s made from recycled paper before it’s even bagged the first time.
Fibreglass batts are made by super-heating spun rock or glass fibre in a furnace. Cellulose Fibre Insulation is made by pulping and shredding recycled paper, usually post-consumer waste newsprint that would otherwise be heading to landfill itself. A peer-reviewed study puts cellulose at 75 to 85% recycled paper content, with manufacturing energy of roughly 1 to 3 MJ per kilogram against 11 to 45 MJ per kilogram for typical commercial insulation, about 90% less energy at the midpoint of those two ranges. Frontiers in Built Environment (2023) — recycled-paper content and embodied-energy range ↗
yourhome.gov.au, the Australian Government’s own guide to sustainable homes, points to the same embodied-energy comparison when it discusses insulation materials. yourhome.gov.au — Embodied energy ↗
Recycled paper feedstock, low manufacturing energy, and a bag that goes back to the factory instead of the tip. That’s the environmental case for Cellulose Fibre Insulation, and every part of it is something we can point to a document or a photo for.
The other end of the product’s life
When cellulose comes back out of a roof, it goes back to the factory, not the tip.
Old cellulose insulation is vacuumed out rather than ripped out by hand. From there it can be brought back to our own factory in Tiaro and remanufactured into new bags, ready to go back out on the next job. That’s only possible because we manufacture Cellulose Fibre Insulation ourselves and control both ends of the process, from the recycled paper going in to the vacuum hose coming out.
A batt company that buys its product in from an overseas manufacturer has no equivalent option. Once a batt is bagged for the tip, that’s the end of it.
Both jobs, side by side
The same removal job, two different waste streams.
This is specifically about the packaging and end-of-life waste each product leaves behind, not R-value or install quality.
| Stage | Fibreglass batts | Cellulose Fibre Insulation |
|---|---|---|
| Packaging on delivery | Compressed plastic wrap per pack, torn open and binned | Reusable bag, refilled and sent back out again |
| Feedstock | Newly spun rock or glass fibre | 75 to 85% recycled paper |
| Removal from the roof | Rolled up and bagged in plastic by hand | Vacuumed out |
| Where it ends up | General waste, no take-back program found | Back to our Tiaro factory, remanufactured into new bags |
Straight answers
Fibreglass batt waste, the questions I get.
What actually happens to old fibreglass batts when they come out of a roof?+
We roll them up, bag the debris in plastic and cart the bags off site to the tip. That's true whether the batts are being replaced because they've settled and gapped, or pulled out because a house is having its insulation redone properly. Once they're bagged there's nothing further to do with them — they go into general waste, same as any other bagged rubbish off a job site.
Where does the plastic from a batt job actually end up?+
There are two lots of plastic on a typical batt job. Fibreglass batts arrive wrapped and compressed in plastic packaging, which gets torn open and binned as each pack is laid. Then, when old batts are removed years later, the debris gets bagged in plastic again to cart off site. In my own experience across South East Queensland and Northern NSW, I've never found anywhere that takes either lot back — both trips end at general waste.
Is Cellulose Fibre Insulation more environmentally friendly than fibreglass batts?+
On the two things I can actually stand behind, yes. Our cellulose comes in reusable bags that get refilled and run through the factory hundreds of times instead of being thrown out after one job, so there's no waste plastic on the way in. And the fibre itself starts life as 75 to 85% recycled paper rather than newly quarried rock or melted glass, with a peer-reviewed embodied-energy figure of roughly 1 to 3 MJ per kilogram to manufacture against 11 to 45 MJ per kilogram for typical commercial insulation, about 90% less energy at the midpoint of those two ranges.
What happens to Cellulose Fibre Insulation when it's removed from a roof?+
It gets vacuumed out rather than ripped out by hand, then brought back to our own factory in Tiaro and remanufactured into new bags. That's a genuinely different end point to a batt job's plastic bags heading to the tip, and it's only possible because we manufacture the product ourselves rather than buying it in from an overseas supplier with no way to take it back.
Does the same waste problem apply to loose-pumped fibreglass, like Knauf Jetmax?+
It arrives in bags rather than compressed packs, so the packaging story is a little different, but I haven't found a program that takes those bags back for reuse either. The comparison on this page is specifically about fibreglass batts, since that's the removal job that generates the pile of plastic in the video above.
Figures on this page are read from the cited peer-reviewed and government sources, current as of July 2026. Everything else on this page describes what we’ve personally seen and done on real jobs. This page is general information, not an environmental compliance claim about any specific disposal or recycling facility.
Do you have fibreglass batts in your roof now? We can quote to remove them or fix your insulation.
If you’d rather your next insulation job didn’t leave a pile of plastic behind, the two products that don’t work that way are Cellulose Fibre Insulation and polyester batts. Get a quote and we’ll talk you through both.
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Peter Johnson
Owner / installer · Comfort Zone Insulation Team® · Since 1986