Plastics Recycled

WHAT IF USED SINGLE USE PLASTIC WRAPPERS COULD BE A RESOURCE, NOT A WASTE?

Soft plastics make easy effective packaging that keeps our food clean, safe and fresh but challenging to recycle at scale - capturing this stuff and keeping it from ending up in landfill is where the Community Waste Collectives program comes in, so it doesn't end up in landfill.

MICRO-COLLECTIONS FOR SOFT PLASTIC - LAUNCHING IN DEC 2022

240L MACRO COLLECTIONS FOR SOFT PLASTICS

We've sourced hard for a circular outcome for soft plastics in our Circular Supplier Network, and together with our mates at Waste Ninja, we're now able to offer 240L bins for soft plastic pick ups - you can opt for a weekly, fortnightly or monthly pick up. With advanced recycling methods, all soft plastic collected is turned back into virgin material.

120L MICRO COLLECTIONS PICK UPS FOR SOFT PLASTIC

Can't justify a 240L bin? Cirque du Soil's micro- collections for soft plastic covers the gaps for small to medium businesses and the residential home. Just compress your soft plastics into 60L plastic bags for an easy pick up, and you can opt for a weekly, fortnightly or monthly pick up. Bundle it with your organics micro-collections for a discounted price!

COMING SOON IN JULY 2024 - RE:CAP PROGRAM

Australians buy almost 15 million plastic bottles each year, with an equivalent number of plastic bottle caps that come with those purchases. Due to their small size, plastic bottle caps often go unnoticed and are irresponsibly discarded, and yet - these are one of the top five most harmful pollutants for marine life!

The Re:Cap program was conceived to address this glaring gap in plastic waste recovery. We've partnered with a local plastic bottle cap upcycler to divert plastic bottle caps to give them a 2nd life. More news to come in the coming weeks....

SKRUNCH UP YOUR SOFT PLASTICS WITH US

Our new Circular Supplier Skrunch-it is a new VIC local circular startup and have made an uber cool product that's easy to use with existing drawstring plastic or reuse bags. Made from recycled materials itself, it's tiny and doesn't take up much space but serves to enable us to collect soft plastics at home, at work, and on the go.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Mobilise your neighbours and clan up for climate change.

Why have a Community Waste Collective?

While we've become a bit of the city's top urban composting geeks over the past 3 years, while engaging with our members - we realised we kept tripping over other tricky waste streams. Food waste is connected to not just food scraps, but the serving ware and packaging that comes along with it, be it compostable coffee cups and straws, takeaway containers etc. With the single use plastic ban looming in Feb 2023, a decision was made - why can't we do more? Instead let's create a circular economy family network and work collaboratively to supercharge our social and environmental impact under one unified urban waste program.

What is a Community Waste Collective?

The community waste collectives (CWC) is a circular waste program designed to tackle common waste streams from urban businesses. The CWC program is designed with a place-based approach, where our team will help each newly onboarded member identify present day waste management practices and costs, and help form a "community waste collective" to broker access to lower pricings, decreased transportation costs, improve waste infrastructure to handle increased source separaration. Through Cirque du Soil, The collective is able to benefit from jointly develop circular tailored solutions with industry partners and local businesses.

Why are there 9 material streams?

We started with 3 streams, and 3 suppliers, and within the span of a year this has grown to 9 material streams and 16 suppliers. Closing the loop on all the waste streams we have identified is a pretty painstaking labour of love and not an overnight process. Some of our suppliers are startups, while some are established organisations. This program itself is an evolving ecosystem in itself as we find ways to meet supply and micro recycling and manufacturing demand. What we're doing is fostering new Circular products and opportunities, and with it comes new businesses to bring in as an active solution to share with our CWC members. We don't have all the solutions yet, but we're working towards it!

Who can join?

For now, all hospitality businesses in the City of Yarra can participate in our Year 1 pilot - that includes cafes, restaurants, takeaways, pubs, bars (and wine bars!), bakeries, breweries, deli's ... if you sell food we'll be there!

As our program and networks mature, it will be offered to development projects including retail, office blocks and apartments.

What does it cost?

Currently we are offering the first 10 hospitality businesses in the City of Yarra free 1 year membership to join our circular waste program. Once all the spots are filled, our membership cost is $9.90 a month (Ex GST).

Why is there a membership fee?

Your membership to our program includes bespoke consultation and your initial circular waste proposal to help your transform your business's waste practices, and supports the continual development and evolution of our circular waste initiatives, allows us to build out our team and provide on the ground training to be, on the ground (pun intended), increase awareness and knowledge of climate issues and to directly engage with communities for our street campaigns. Any profit propels our purpose for planet.

What does the phased step by step approach to the campaign window stickers mean?

Committing to 9 material streams right off the bat is a bit crazy, we know. This isn't an overnight process. So we've designed a phased step by step approach to the window sticker badging system, specific to your chosen material streams that you'd like to tackle first. Once you know you want your business to show your customers the commitment to going circular and zero waste, you will receive a base window sticker and a choice of 2-3 initial material streams. Once you've got these locked down with your team operations and want to go for more, you can roll the dice for the next material stream. Dealer's choice!

What are the benefits of becoming a CWC member?

- Access to our Circular Supplier Network pricings for cost benefits and discounts with collective purchasing power for services and products.
- Lower (not just yours, but your street's) carbon emissions by streamlining waste management logistics
- Increase team knowledge and education around zero waste and Circularity to anyone keen to learn how to go beyond just being “sustainable”
- Increase neighbourhood sharing capabilities and conversations with your trader neighbours. We help you identify the opportunities and connect you but bin sharing is unfortunately something that we don't manage.
- Map a business’s journey to circular transition and measure carbon emissions saved from being a CWC member, including economic, environmental and social impacts
- Increase your public visibility to customers with our window badging system, to show your commitment to fighting climate issues through your changing business and waste practices.
- Regular updates with the latest in circular products and services.

What is a Circular Supplier Network?

We had a dream... of creating a circular economy familia because quite honestly - waste is an epic issue and nobody mad enough should tackle this alone! We're creating a growing network of aligned and like minded purpose partners in the waste space who fit our circular supplier criteria.

What is your Circular Supplier Criteria?

Our circular supplier criteria is a set of data points and measurements designed to help assess potential and existing members of the Cirque du Soil Circular Supplier Network. We use this as a guide while working with each circular supplier network partner to understand the overall circularity of their business model, services and product/s, and to ensure alignment with the Community Waste Collective program goals.

What is the benefit of joining as a Circular Supplier?

Think of us as your outsourced community engagement team. Our goal is to:

- Build up our industry partners profiles and showcase their circular products and services.
- Weigh in on “circularity” in improvements to our business models through our circular supplier criteria assessment.
- Instead of a single business measuring individual environmental/social impact, to harness our collective impact across purpose driven Australian startups and organisations.
- We identify urban resources for local makers/manufacturers needed for the manufacturing of circular products and encourage a member buyback scheme.

Why are some of the material streams activated and some not?

We care about who our circular suppliers are and where they’re at. We also don’t have all the answers - yet. The CE community in melb is growing fast, and with CWC program framework in place, this is intentionally designed to be an evolving network of both suppliers and members collaborating to establish new micro loops for new local and circular waste initiatives. Our climate problems are not going to go away overnight, so as the circular products/services market grows, so will community interest - it's an exciting thing to watch!

What's the difference between this and the Community Compost Collective?

The Community Compost Collective is now tucked under the CWC program umbrella, to honour our origin story of our composting micro loop. Basically anyone who just wants to get started with a single material stream (or if the CWC feels a bit overwhelming) can just start with composting first - hey that's 50-60% of your bin already!

TRANSITIONING LOCAL BUSINESSES TOWARDS
A CIRCULAR WASTE ECONOMY

A collaborative industry partnered approach to waste from high streets to high rise.
Below are the Material Streams we are tackling, select the stream to see where it goes...