Our highlights from 2024:
We took a step back to pause and reflect on 2024, and what a year our 5th year has been!
On January 9 2020 Cirque du Soil picked its first buckets of food waste when we commenced our year long micro-pilot. We didn’t know our ‘nothing leaves a 5k radius’ would take on extra meaning when establishing the parameters for hyperlocal recycling.
🌍 Lifetime Food Waste Impact
Our compost program impact stats to date are:
- 6,125 buckets and 431 bins of food waste composted.
- 79,203 kg of food waste diverted from landfill.
- 165,553 kg CO₂e of emissions prevented.
With great thanks to Bank Australia for their ongoing support for climate and equality, in 2024 we were able to acquire a dedicated low-impact vehicle to support our work. Following some extensive lifecycle analysis we welcomed a new Daihatsu HiJet to the team, with its 0.66L highly efficient ICE engine, low kerb weight and tiny footprint – it is no more and no less than what we need.
Whilst Euro7 standards are ages away, it’s promising to see the pollution from tyre abrasion being recognised, and this is featuring in our online lifecycle measurement.
🌱 Urban Agriculture & Circular Products
- We completed the 2 year GrowGood R&D Project with RMIT and Maze funded by Sustainability Victoria, validating the urban fertiliser outputs for urban farming and domestic house plant case studies from our Community Compost Collective Program utilising Green Eco Technology.
- We also engaged urban communities with food waste kokedama workshops, piloting upcycled plant products like mycelium pots and phantm pots at @Gabriel Cafe in Fitzroy in a year long trial. Thrilled to report the plants and their circular homes are thriving with care from the cafe custodians!
It’s our longer term vision to displace commercial (linear) fertiliser and improve the circularity of our composting program by completing more links in the loop of ‘food waste > fertiliser > local growing > local procurement’ as we also work to prevent waste creation from occurring.
🏙 Urban Innovation & Waste Recycling
- Shortlisted as one of the Top three finalists in the City of Melbourne’s 2024 Fisherman’s Bend Digital Innovation Challenge for the Mia Mias Micro Material Bank design concept. It came second, and we are looking forward to building further on this idea in the future.
🎪 Events & Entertainment
- Cirque du Soleil’s Luzia show, supporting Melbourne’s production team and back-of-house kitchen to minimise food waste and optimise circular practices. It’s always great to meet people and organisations doing what they can to minimise their footprint, and we were blown away by the logistics behind the scenes at the ‘Circus of the Sun’.
- Supported Fitzroy North School’s end of year school fete, National Sustainability Festival’s Great Local Picnic
- Launching our Circularity in Action Social Meet up events to further harness the coming together and collective energy of the great people we’ve met along the way, old and new alike.
- Decompressing at the Reignite Leadership Retreat in Qld with Impact Boom- we can’t praise this enough as a mid year pause for a busy, purpose driven working year.
- Attending the ReimaginED conference, a dedicated education conference for all discussions on wellbeing, resilience, regen, and circular futures for our youth.
🎥 Film & Media Production
- Worked with major productions (Sony Pictures, NBC Universal, Matchbox, Werner Film, Apple Productions, Picture Zero UK) to reduce on-set carbon emissions from food waste under the BAFTA Albert certification.
- Developed a live impact tracker for food waste rescued from individual roving sets.
- Expanding methods to address additional micro-material waste streams.
- Proving our composting programs efficient and effective across both long-term and short-term projects, including The Finch Company.
- Undertook a global desktop analysis of the issues, barriers and solutions within the industry.
🏛 Education and Local Government Advisory Support
- Finalised our new middle & senior school circular education programs.
- Launched the Organics Advisory Service to support all hospitality SME’s and hotels across 6 precincts in the Moonee Valley City Council area.
💡 Consulting & Business Partnerships
- Collaborated with Australia Post on a multi-site food waste diversion and measurement pilot project, with a dedicated food waste audit and live tracker across individual staff kitchenettes.
- Served as technical advisors for MSD’s ReForm Studio, advising final-year architecture students on circular design practices.
The Bigger Picture
We’ve celebrated some monumental shifts this year across the CE industry, such as the release of new international standards for CE in the ISO Circular Economy 59000 series, and recently published Australia’s Circular Economy Framework by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, launched this month. It’s a decent starting point for the work carved out ahead for all of us working in the local, regional, global CE community.
2024 has reinforced a powerful truth: creating a regenerative future requires us to think big but ‘understand small’. Change requires engaged people contributing their knowledge and taking leadership in their areas of influence.
To enable circular ecosystems, we’ve embraced being generalists, purveyors of critical knowledge gaps —understanding the nuances of industries ranging from SMEs to major corporations, startups, communities, and global forces.
Personally, this perspective has been our superpower. From food waste to micro-material recycling, every action we take is to transform waste into opportunity, and put in our bit to contribute towards the ripple effects, because change thrives at the intersections of industries.
Thank you to all our team(s), partners, collaborators, and mates rallying for change, who have been part of our 2024 journey. Here’s to another year of purpose-driven progress!
#Regeneration #CircularEconomy #Sustainability #Reflections2024 #Collaboration
