FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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LET’S GET DIRTY

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTONS

What does Cirque du Soil stand for?
Cirque du Soil means for “Circular Soil”, which for us means the micro loop around buildings, food systems and waste.
Why do you do what you do?
We love working adjacent to existing systems to disrupt and innovate through our ideas. We see ourselves regenerative ecosystems enablers building communities of climate action. We started with Melbourne’s first hyperlocal and circular food waste recovery program and huge advocates for urban composting in cities, and in doing this - everyday we get to explore the complex minefield of waste issues and build up a village working for change.
What do you do with your profits?
As a purpose social enterprise, we use 60% of our profits back into circular waste initiatives and supporting local community garden and farming projects.
What on earth is circular waste consulting and what's your process like?
We consult on onsite/offsite composting best practice in all sorts of tricky urban environments, help you identify upstream (procurement) and downstream (operational) circular waste solutions and advise on behaviour change and engagement around waste minimisation, source separation and contamination avoidance. From food recycling machines to worm farms, our circular supplier network is well connected – and broker what you need to get a bespoke zero waste program off the ground, including the procurement of waste infrastructure for precincts, businesses or apartments.

Every space and demographic mix is different and there’s always a circular waste management system opportunity around the corner.
How are you dealing with COVID-19?
There’s no rest for the wicked in the world of waste. When needed, we operate as a contactless service and will take all considered measures to reduce risks of any COVID-19 transmissions. We will usually check with our members as individual situations may change. This means hand sanitation (it’s a messy business anyway) and masks on if we are required to enter your premises, and all safety precautions are rigorously considered for safe social distancing.
Can I have a contactless pickup?
Totes! The safety of our program members, colleagues and the entire community is of the utmost importance to us. With COVID-19, restrictions are changing all the time so keep up to date with government and state legislations.If we re-enter any further lockdowns (boo), our ops team will place your collection vessel on your doorstep or front porch or rear of hospo kitchen. If you’re not there or you’re self-isolating and unable to open the door, the bucket will be left in a safe place as per normal COVID safety protocols. You’ll need to ensure your collection vessel for exchange is in the safe space specified in your pick- up instructions.
Please note that pick up instructions must be updated before your cut-off point (at midday, three days before delivery). After this we are unable to make any changes to your pick up order.
Do you take interns / volunteers?
We’ve had over 25 vollies come through since our inception in 2019. We couldn't have come this far without the dedication of some solid great people who have joined us sine the beginning! Our work is pretty out of the box, deft and hands on – whether during our project creation phase, program operations, marketing campaigns or lovingly washing buckets.Our projects are constantly in a range of phases, and as a small team we always welcome a limited number of interns and volunteers in a year.
I hear you're offering pick ups for other waste streams, when is this happening?
It takes a lot of support to shake up the traditional waste ecosystem as you can imagine. We operate inner city and we're just not here to be one of the big trucks plugging our tiny laneways. With the launch of our industry partnered Community Waste Collectives program, we expect expanded streams to hit in early 2023, or as soon as we find circular pathways for waste materials in the local area - once we build up our firepower we'll be able to divert more waste streams from landfill and increase our environmental impact, together.

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Our soft plastics program is available in Oct 2022.

Do something drastic & cut the plastic. Single-use plastic food packaging is a major contributor to the global solid waste problem. Although the food industry is developing strategies to reduce single-use plastic packaging, we need to better understand consumer awareness and attitudes about the issue.

When you toss a plastic bottle into your recycling bin, there’s no guarantee it actually gets recycled. In fact, odds are, it doesn’t. 

This is one of our key priority streams, where by using the same containers, in the same form, over and over again – it eases demand for virgin materials, reduces energy needed to spit out thousands of new plastic bottles or cardboard boxes, and prevents heaps of trash from ending up in landfills or oceans.

They’re bulky, large in size and consumes large amounts of space.

We use paper and cardboard in so much packaging and stacks of it still ends up in landfill, resulting in stacks of methane production, a major greenhouse gas.

When when you recycle cardboard waste and keep it free of oil and contamination, you end up saving ample amounts of water and energy and minimise trees being chopped down to get virgin material.

Cigarette butts are the world’s most littered plastic item, with around 7 billion dropped in Australia every year. In partnership with Fungi Solutions, CigCycle collected cigarette butts will undergo a Myco-Remediation program (mushrooms, FYI) at their Thornbury myco-facility for research and development for new circular materials.