Buy Recycled Champion: Katelyn Fryer

My interest in sustainability stems back to my childhood. I grew up surrounded by the beautiful rainforests and beaches of northern NSW, hence have always had a strong connection to the natural environment. I hated the idea of waste and was the recycling champion both at home and at school, where I introduced a recycling program.

This passion continued into my studies where I obtained a Bachelor of Science, and then a Bachelor Agriculture and Technology. Soon after completing my science degree, I headed overseas and worked in East Africa in natural resource conservation, and then moved to the United Kingdom where I started working in waste and sustainability.

In London I worked on many innovative waste avoidance and recycling projects and led the introduction of recycling bins for the London Underground. This was initially considered too difficult and dangerous; however, I was able to negotiate a solution which addressed terrorism concerns and included bomb proof plastic reinforced bins.

I also led a project to introduce recycling to more than 40,000 properties within London council estates, which involved a doorstep collection of recyclables in clear bags. Being the first of its kind this project made it through to the top 5 finalists for a national recycling award.

I facilitate an internal ‘Circular Economy’ working group, comprised of representatives from across the organisation including assets, project management, procurement etc. This group builds skills, shares learnings and drives uptake of recycled materials in Council projects. We meet every two months and I usually invite a guest speaker and allow time for discussion on project implementation and procurement.

I’ve also led the development of Council’s Circular Economy (CE) Action Plan which is currently out for community consultation. Procurement is a key priority within this three-year action plan, along with waste avoidance, maximising reuse, innovation, collaboration, creating systems change and advocacy. This plan aims to shift the way Council procures through the introduction of targets and priority actions. I worked closely with Council’s procurement team and other relevant teams (e.g. asset management) to develop and agree on these targets.

I am now keen to work further with our procurement team to develop some potential procurement tools including setting up data capture and monitoring systems so we can get some baseline data to support the action plan, and track our progress towards our targets.

Our new draft CE Action Plan outlines the key objectives, targets and actions to drive a whole-of-organisation transition to a circular economy.

We found it really valuable to work closely with our procurement team and other departments with subject matter expertise when developing the action plan. We have opted for a 3-year plan to ensure we were able to be agile and keep up with the rate of change in the industry; however, we need to be realistic about what is achievable in that time frame.

In our first action plan we have a big focus on working with procurement on:

• setting up and embedding systems to collect and track data across the organisation
• updating tender specifications
• looking at material flows in our municipality
• focusing on our top 10 spend items.

We have also been working in collaboration with the Buy Recycled Champions in our neighbouring region Geelong and liaising with local hard aggregate recyclers. They may be able to take mixed hard aggregate loads from roads and other asset renewal projects, that otherwise would have gone to landfill. To do this I connected Boral Recycling with our asset management and civil operations teams.

We are also working on organising an event in May for Surf Coast Shire and Geelong council staff to visit Boral Recycling to hear about their work and to observe the hard aggregate grinder in operation. The grinder crushes diverted material to make recycled aggregate products, which can be used again by councils.

We’re also hoping to organise other site visits for council staff to highlight local recycled and circular product suppliers across our region.

I can provide advice on:

• developing a Circular Economy Action Plan
• establishing and facilitating internal recycled materials working groups.
• community education and behaviour change programs
• waste avoidance
• recycling
• organics.

There are many opportunities for our Council to increase its use of recycled content in projects, such as roads, kerbs, and footpaths (new and renewals), as they are an area of significant spend.

New builds are also an area of great potential. We will be building a new Surf Coast Aquatic and Health Centre and have ensured use of recycled materials was added to the project agenda.

Our CE Action Plan will allow us to implement circular procurement in a more strategic way.

The Buy Recycled Champions program is a wonderful network of like-minded, motivated and passionate people. Sustainability Victoria has done a great job of:

• facilitating and developing the network including regular meetings, site visits, field trips or events
• the Buy Recycled Directory and other resources
• the recent support from Procurement Australia.

These are resources that we all need. The training has given me extra credibility so that I can effectively engage with internal departments.

The power of the network is that you can ask questions, share knowledge and information and maximise efficiency when you are working on similar projects.

I’m a qualified winemaker and I've worked across Victoria and in the United States making wine. I even had my own wine label.