Reuse online resources

Sustainability Victoria

Circular Economy Showcase Reuse Pilots in Office Buildings

Tuesday, 22 August 2023

Presented by:

MC:

Sandra Mack

Team Leader, Plastics Sustainability Victoria

Moderators:

Heather Willison - Program Lead, Sustainability Victoria

Brij Parmar - Project Advisor, Sustainability Victoria

Keynote Speakers:

Patrick Manley- Co-Founder, Cercle

Leah Rattray - Occupant Experience Manager, Investa Asset Management

Chad Buxton - Partnership Manager, Huskee

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Acknowledgement of Country’, ‘Sustainability Victoria’, with image of colourful Aboriginal art]

[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]

Sandra Mack:

Before we start officially, I would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are the traditional custodians of the land from which I’m joining you today. And I pay my respects to their Elders past and present and I also pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the lands from which you all are joining today. I acknowledge that we live and work on the lands of the world’s oldest and most sustainable culture and I acknowledge the deep connection to earth of the First Nations people over the past 60,000 years and their invaluable contributions to our understanding of climate change and to the environment.

First of all I wanted to give you a bit of an overview of what today’s one hour session will look like. You will hear from three of our Reuse Pilot projects- Cercle, Investa Asset Management, and Huskee. Some housekeeping before we start - as I mentioned before please keep yourselves on mute unless you are wanting to ask questions during the Q&A later. If you do have a question along the way about any of the presentations, please pop them in the chat. We are monitoring the chat and will be responding to questions in the chat and also addressing them in the Q&A session if of interest to everyone. Those questions we don’t get around to today we will respond to post the webinar.

We will also share the slides and the recording of the session in the next week or so. So, if you know anyone who couldn’t make it today, we encourage you to share the webinar recording once it’s been made available. As I said any questions pop them in the chat and we’ll come back to them in some way.

So today before we start, I wanted to give you a bit of a background of the program as well. As you all would be aware plastic pollution harms our health, our wildlife, and our environment, and in Victoria single use plastics make up a third of the litter we see on our streets and in our waterways. They are costly to clean up and also difficult to recycle on top of polluting the environment.

For this reason, the Victorian State Government banned six of the most challenging single use plastic items from sale in February this year. We’ve been working with the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) to communicate this ban to businesses and also to support them in implementing solutions that reduce waste and encourage reuse. So rather than having other single use options we’ve been encouraging and working with businesses to switch to reuse systems. I also wanted to thank Cip Hamilton from DEECA because we’ve been working very closely on this together. I believe she might also be here today joining our webinar. She’s the Senior Policy Officer, Plastic Pollution. As part of the work that we did together with DEECA we engaged face to face with more than 3,400 businesses and informed and supported them in introducing reusables and we also funded 16 Reuse Pilots of which three we are presenting today.

Today is about reuse systems in office buildings or similar settings. Our other webinars on various settings, for example reuse systems at universities, are available on our website. There are also some other really valuable resources on our website so just have a look through. These are some examples of campaign materials that we’ve been using to support our reuse campaign.

Through the Reuse Pilots Fund as I mentioned we funded 16 projects that prioritise waste avoidance and reuse solutions with a focus on single use ranging from coffee cups or food containers to cutlery and plates. So different types of products as well as settings were trialled in the Reuse Pilots and we’re really hoping that the results of the Reuse Pilots and all the learnings that the businesses have collected on the way and that they’ve shared with us will help other businesses and organisations to implement reuse systems in their respective settings.

As the program is now ending, we are also working on a final report to sum up all the findings from the 16 Reuse Pilots and will turn them into a guide that we will share once finalised. I’m also very excited to let you know that we will share all those findings at the Waste Expo which is coming up in October. Our presentation on the Reuse Pilot findings will be on Wednesday the 25 October. Heather, if you could copy and paste the link to the registrations for that in the chat that would be great.

I think that’s enough of me so I’m now going to hand over to our presenters from the three case studies you will hear about today. First we have Investa, then we have Huskee and then we have – sorry. We have Cercle first. So first I’m handing over to Patrick Manley from Cercle who is the co-founder of Cercle, a free to use reusable coffee cup system for office buildings. Patrick started Cercle after his frustration of forgetting his reusable cup. That frustration grew to a point where he could no longer contain it and he teamed up with a nearby café owner to design Cercle. Cercle is now in a handful of buildings in Australia and was supported by Sustainability Victoria to be activated in the Olderfleet building in Melbourne. Patrick I’ll be handing over to you, and if you could just sing out for the next slides that would be great.

Patrick Manley:

Wonderful. Thank you so much Sandra. And it’s great to be here to talk to everyone about Cercle and our journey that we’ve had with establishing this site in Melbourne. So, I thought we’d just kick off by briefly imagining the problem that we’re trying to solve which is that we have an awful lot of disposable cups in office buildings. This won’t be a surprise to anyone.

Heather Willison:

Sorry Patrick. You’ve just dropped on to mute. If you could unmute yourself. Sorry.

Patrick Manley:

Yeah. Should have seen that. Thank you Heather. If you wouldn’t mind going to the next slide. These disposable cups show us where all of the coffees are being bought for the building. And so for the Olderfleet building which is this square in the centre of the map here we can see where all the main sources of disposable cups have come from and the large majority of them, 60% are from the footprint within the building which is really interesting for us when it comes to implementing Cercle because we’ve got the support of this particular building and these cafés that are marked in green. That was basically our target group for the initial launch of Cercle and we have the opportunity to expand out to those other cafes in the near future. If we just keep going to the next slide.

Cercle is a system rather than a product. It uses the Returnr cup. We’ve created some collection containers to capture those cups and then we build a system of collecting the cups, washing, and returning them back to the café. And the reason we do that is we’re trying to make the user experience as easy as possible for all the stakeholders that are involved. So easy for the cafés when it comes to serving their coffees into a reusable cup and then, really importantly, easy for the users such as myself, the frustrated and lazy coffee drinker who could not remember their own reusable cup, so that we’re able to target real mass adoption of reuse in these environments. We’ll keep going to the next slide if that’s okay.

So, the timing of this project. We’d been talking to the Olderfleet building for a while and then when this fund became available, we jumped on the opportunity to utilise this for the activation. And the project essentially started this year with lots of engagement and all the different activities and went live in May. So, it’s fairly recent. We’ve got the data for the last couple of months which we’ll show in the following slides but it’s a fairly recent project. The next things that are going to be happening with this is then the expansions and improvement. These are all of the stakeholders that were part of the project. If you want to keep going to the next slide.

So, it involved three cafés, building cleaners that help Consolidated who are our partners in running the system. There’s 15 tenants that have access to Cercle and our major project sponsors are Sustainability Victoria, Mirvac, Consolidated and obviously Cercle. Let’s jump across to the next slide.

So, what we actually did at Olderfleet is install sort of a summary of all the things that we brought to site in addition to the long process that we had in terms of engaging with the stakeholders and activating the site. We’ve got lots of cups, lots of drop pods. We installed an onsite washing facility. That’s one of the things that’s I think really key as we adopt reuse is that we’re going to need washing facilities in lots of these large commercial sites. It’s not always possible to get cafés to wash reuse at the scale we’re going to need it to be washed at. And we also had a large focus on signage and marketing to make sure everyone knew what was going on in the building. So, if we could keep going to the next slide.

Our process was pretty much design and install a wash facility, train lots of stakeholders which included the building cleaners. We ran lots of training sessions with them and the cafés. And the next sort of stages that we’ve got which we’re in now is this monitoring feedback and increasing the performance of the system. But I wouldn’t underestimate the – there was lots to do in those early stages. So, this is a couple of the parts of what Cercle now looks like at the building. Obviously, we’ve got lots of people looking very happy with their cups. And that’s all working quite well.

If we go to the next slide, I’ve got a little bit of a flow diagram of just what the user journey is like. So going back to why the user journey is very important to us. This is somebody who comes and gets their coffee, takes it away in their cup. They can go up to their office or stay down in the lobby and then all they’ve got to do is drop it into our drop pods which were designed to collect these cups. And it’s as simple as that. That really is the extent to which they’re involved in the system as a user.

And then on the next slide we’ve got a couple of images for what then happens behind the scenes. So those cups are then collected out of the drop pod, placed onto a trolley, taken down to our centralised wash facility. We’ve been developing as part of this project a couple of smarts in that wash facility to improve how efficient that is in terms of the recording of the cups, the drying of them. One of the things that’s really obvious from these types of systems is the operational cost of washing cups and so we’re working really hard with our partners to reduce that cost so that we’ve got a very efficient system when it is deployed into these buildings. If we could go to the next slide.

This is some of the reactions that we got from people. I think lots of people were fairly delighted that they had a free to use reusable cup in their office building and it had a sort of fairly good impact socially around having reuse in the building. But one of the things that we’re finding from a lot of these big asset managers is that it really helps with the engagement and the building a community within the building to launch something like Cercle as it shows that the building in this case is really aligned to the values of a lot of the users who want to adopt more reusable principles. So, it’s been really positive. If we can go to the next slide.

The important question of actually what impact we’ve had. Every day we’re monitoring the number of cups that we’ve washed and this is the dataset up until the end of last week. So, it’s almost 10,000 cups diverted since the end of May, and we expect – if we go across to the next slide, we have got our target of 60,000 within a year and this is how we’re tracking against that target. So, our performance is being monitored in the building. We’re looking to have a stretched target that will go beyond this line as well. And the other thing that we’re able to do with the system that we’ve installed is in the future expand to other types of reuse containers. So, we’re starting with the cups but there’s going to be every opportunity to expand it out to other reusable containers in the future.

And finally, I think on the next slide our key learnings have been pretty interesting from this site. The preferences of users is something that we definitely cannot and will never underestimate how important that is. And by users, I mean both people who are drinking coffee in the cafés. There’s a couple of things that really stuck out for me in Melbourne which is the need for smaller cups and the need for a really good lid. The current lids that we’ve got are based on silicone and silicone is not a great material for reusable systems because it absorbs a lot of the tannins from coffee and things and so we’re definitely looking to try and improve our lid for release into future systems.

The system of having the buildings collecting, washing, and returning the cups is working really well - we’re very pleased with that. There’s a very good level of communication between the cleaners and the cafés which is awesome and not something that existed necessarily before this implementation in the same capacity. And a huge learning for us is that coordinating those communications out to tenants is something that we can definitely do better in our next building, making sure that everyone receives the same information at the same time. It’s absolutely key for the launch to go really effectively.

I think that is now it from me. So, thank you all very much. Anyone’s very welcome to reach out to us at any time if you have any questions. Certainly keen to hear about other sort of buildings where this might work really well at. So, feel free to contact me, reach out, and happy to chat.

I think you might be muted Sandra.

Sandra Mack:

Can you hear me now?

Patrick Manley:

We can. Yeah.

Sandra Mack:

Okay. Well thank you Patrick. That was great. I’m sure there is a few questions that we’ll get to later. Before we do though I’ll hand over to Leah.

I’ll hand over to Leah Rattray for the Eliminate Single Use Plastics at 567 Collins Street. Leah is the Occupant Experience Manager at this facility and she’s focusing on the intersection of human experience and architecture. Leah is passionate about implementing placemaking strategies that highlight the amenity and benefits of working in one of Investa’s premium grade buildings. So, Leah over to you.

Leah Rattray:

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Eliminate SUP @ 567 Collins Street’, ‘This project was supported by the Circular Economy Reuse Pilots Fund. The Fund was delivered by Sustainability Victoria under the Victorian Government’s circular economy policy, Recycling Victoria: a new economy’, ‘Investa acknowledges the traditional owners of the land, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present’]

Thanks Sandra and thanks for the introduction. I just thought I’d give a brief overview about who Investa are. So, we acquire, develop, and manage real estate assets on behalf of our partners. We currently own or manage 26 assets in Australia and provide workplaces for 565 tenants. We’ve got $16 billion worth of assets owned or managed by Investa’s team of 242 people. So, we’re not huge but we like to think we do great things with the team that we’ve got and the amazing assets that we have. So, we can move on to the next slide please.

Okay. So, our ESG strategy. We have a vision to drive the future of real estate. We want to enrich the lives of our customers and deliver outstanding performance for our partners, exceptional opportunities for our people. We have a purpose of creating a legacy of positive impact and a strategic ambition to be at the leading edge of every real estate asset class we invest and operate in which is why when the opportunity came up to apply for the Sustainability Victoria grant it was for us a no brainer. So, we’ll go onto the next slide.

So, the grant opportunity was actually forwarded to me by our General Manager of ESG and we quickly ascertained that this would be a fantastic pilot to test at 567 Collins Street given our tenant mix, the variety of food and beverage retailers that we have and our shared values for thinking creatively and applying innovative ideas to enhance occupant experience. So, eliminating or diverting waste from landfill is a primary sustainability objective for Investa and the implementation of a reusable container system within the building was a strategic fit to demonstrate with the right management and infrastructure in place that we could show leadership in waste management and instil positive behavioural change within our building community. So, this for us was clearly like a system design and data collection exercise that could help inform how to influence behaviour and help our occupants avoid single use plastics ahead of the ban which came into effect in February of 2023.

So with the building management team on board, we quickly gained the support of our other required stakeholders and experts to ensure that our pilot would be a success. We had Foresight Environmental provide our data analysis and Recycle Smart Consulting were our waste consultants on the ground looking at what was happening in our waste streams. We also have Consolidated Property Services in the building as our cleaners and it’s great to see actually that they took part in two slightly different models. So, they were instrumental in the data collection for our pilot program. And then obviously the grant funds from Sustainability Victoria and our reusable container partner Returnr. And last but not least all of our participants who this wouldn’t happen without, our 20 office tenants and our 9 retail tenants who all participated in the project. Next slide please.

Okay. So, planning this project. We needed to be able to observe and measure change in behaviour. This was a critical component of the pilot. To establish a baseline we conducted a pre-pilot audit which looked at single use plastics in our mixed recycling and landfill along with the occupancy rates to work out how many food and beverage containers were used per day at a rate per 100 people. We worked out also the average weight per cup and per food container, and lastly, we worked out the average amount of organic waste per single use container by collecting and weighing the food scraps that were found in those single use food containers. It was important to collect this data before we started as we needed a way to quantify the amount of single use plastics that were avoided as a result of the pilot.

We wanted to maximise the use of reusable containers in the building. In our system design we wanted to make sure it was in the least disruptive way so we decided to set up communal sets of reusable cups and containers within each office tenancy and wherever possible use the existing cleaning services to ensure that as many reusable containers as possible were made available for use at any time of the day. For this I have to give a huge shoutout to Consolidated Property Services for their commitment to this trial in assisting and designing a reliable counting system across 20 tenancies over the 5-month period whereby at the end of every day as part of the dishwasher service any reusable container that was washed and reset would be counted as a single use plastic item avoided.

We then reached out to Returnr to purchase their Micropool sets. This for us was the perfect introductory kit to each of our office tenancies as it came with a variety of cup and bowl and tray types to suit all the different types of food that were available at our retailers on site. In regards to the marketing plan and budget we placed a lot of emphasis on upfront spend, briefing of our occupants and retailers before launching the campaign with a very generous 50% off subsidised to our retailers for any meal or beverage purchased in a reusable. Given there was a planned Christmas shutdown halfway through the pilot we also knew we needed to plan incentives to keep the momentum going once occupants returned to work early in 2023.

The data collected was then uploaded by Foresight Environmental who analysed it in our Power BI portal which will show some results of what the trends were and the change of behaviour in a few slides’ time. And then finally we planned for a post-pilot audit which was undertaken in the last week of the pilot which checked and compared any observed behavioural change over the 5- month period taking into account the increased occupancy rate that took place between October of 2022 and March of 2023. So, there’s a few things going on and lots of data that we ended up layering over the top of each other.

But in terms of engagement, I cannot stress enough that the most effective engagement occurred before the launch even began. It was so important that people knew what was coming and what they were expected to do. It was fantastic to see support for this idea be so well received by occupants and retailers and everyone was excited to give this a go. We created marketing material in line with our new ESG brand providing a distinct and identifiable purpose to the communications as opposed to our general building comms and we used every communication available including posters, e-newsletters, our building app Insight, notifications, lots of word of mouth both from building management and in particular our concierge team. So next slide please.

Okay. 50% is what we launched with. And we weren’t sure how long this was going to last. I thought potentially two weeks. It only lasted nine days. There was such excitement around having such a great deal at their favourite lunch spot. So, it kind of made the idea of shifting behaviour seem like a fun thing to do even though for us we have quite a serious agenda going on in the background. Next slide please.

We also facilitated lunch and learns for our tenants, and whether it was these more formal presentations or informal catch ups, just to make sure all tenancies had the correct waste streams in place. We just made it a priority to provide whatever information and whatever infrastructure to our tenants or the retailers that was required to maximise engagement. And I think the ability to adapt on the spot was important there as well. So when you’re implementing a system you’ve got to be able to pivot and adapt as required. Next slide please.

Then we had our mid-pilot promotion. This came in late January/early February after the Christmas break. These programs were designed to maintain the momentum that we had seen in the lead up to Christmas and encourage people to use more than one type of reusable. So not just the cup, not just the bowl. The incentive was if you use them together. And then in return Returnr sweetened the deal by providing a complimentary subscription to their marketplace offering which further expanded any change in behaviour to our occupants’ lives at home as well. And we ran these promotions through to the end of the pilot. Next slide.

Okay. Data collection. So here are just some shots of how the containers were handled within an office tenancy. So once someone had finished their meal, they would scrape out their food scraps into the organics caddy. They’d be washed in the dishwasher and counted by the cleaning team. We weigh each waste stream in our building every day, so the additional count that this program required was to count the number of reusable cups and food containers cleaned and reset each day. From there we were able to plot any changes in waste streams with an estimated amount of single use plastic waste avoided and where we hoped we would see an improvement in the use of the organics waste stream in particular. Next slide please.

And the data did tell us a wonderful story. So, on that top graph we have the total number of food and beverage containers diverted from landfill. I’ll give you the exact numbers in the next slide, but this is just to show the trend. So, with increasing occupancy we saw increased use of the containers which was great to see. And then the bottom graph shows the estimated weight of single use plastic and organic waste diverted from landfill due to the use of those containers. And once again over time we saw those rates increase. Now there’s a whole range of other graphs that our portal was able to produce but for the purposes of today we’ve picked these two. And happy to discuss other sort of results if anybody wants to reach out. That’s fine.

We recorded, plotted and compared the quantity of reusables used and the estimated weight of the single use plastics avoided, the estimated weight of the organics kept out of landfill or mixed recycling and overlayed that against the actual weight of organics waste found in that waste stream and the changing occupancy rates. We can see from this data the positive impact of what is relatively a very simple behavioural change in the presence of the right infrastructure and the right incentives. The data collected shows overall building trends or we can drill down to a tenancy-by-tenancy level which provides a wonderful, customised tool to speak to our occupants about what is working well and what we could be doing better. Next slide for the numbers.

So, we had a $16,360 grant. We did end up spending more money than what we planned but for the quality of the results that we received that was okay. We avoided 15,307 single-use cups from landfill. We avoided 19,491 single-use containers from landfill. We calculated as a direct result of the pilot we increased the amount of organics in the correct organics waste stream by 5%. And then based on that rate of per 100 people from the audits we were able to see a 9% reduction in single-use cups and an amazing – this one blew me away – 45% reduction in single-use food containers found in our waste streams. So, it just goes to show the coffee cup habit I think is the harder one to break.

I think we’re probably running a little bit out of time so we’ll go to the next slide please Sandra. And then this is just a great slide that shows a lot of the feedback and comments shared by occupants and retailers as you can see. The quality of the container was actually I think quite integral to the success of the program because this is something that washed well. It lasted the test. The food looks beautiful in it, so the retailers were happy to present their food in it as well. All those little things matter. And then for those super engaged tenants everyone was wanting to gamify it. They wanted to know who had the best usage rates. I was able to provide that at our last sustainability committee meeting and share the success in which tenancy actually improved their use of reusable containers the most which was wonderful. We’ll take to the next slide.

And just key learnings and takeaways here. So, we definitely threw a lot of the grant funds upfront to have a successful launch and just really generate that excitement and engagement. Also, I think a great success factor was just keeping it simple. And lasting change happens incrementally so I think if you ask people to do too much at once it will struggle. But just to do a couple of things simply you’ll actually see the longer-term benefits. It was really important to map out that customer journey which I think echoes what Patrick was saying, understanding what the customer does and wants prior to launching a campaign because their support is critical to this. Providing that real time feedback to your customers to keep that momentum going. And we have found that this pilot has definitely increased interest in waste management generally with improved engagement at our own waste workshops that we host in the building and our sustainability committee meetings which is always great to see. Where to next? Next slide.

We’ve just had plastic free July across 12 of our buildings in the portfolio where we actually gave away Huskee cups with free coffee. So a slightly different model where the customer ends up owning that cup rather than it being a communal set. We really want to try lots of different models because I think that if we can get to a point where there’s a few systems working in parallel with one another we are just continually maximising and improving the infrastructure that’s available in the buildings to avoid those single-use plastic items. And we’re also able to speak to a number of our tenants now with the help of the data generated by the pilot to inform their own case studies to eliminating single use plastics within their own tenancies and within other Investa buildings which is really exciting to see. And last slide.

Just recapping on how this fits in to our ESG strategy. We are future first thinking. We are about unlocking value through data, innovation, and an entrepreneurial mindset. So, qualifying for this grant has certainly helped us unlock an incredible amount of value that we look forward to sharing with other buildings in our portfolio who are also looking for innovative ways to positively influence behaviour and make an impact on waste reduction by avoiding single-use plastics wherever possible. So, thank you Sustainability Victoria.

Sandra Mack:

Thank you Leah. That was great. I hope I’ve been unmuted and you can hear me.

Leah Rattray:

Yes.

Sandra Mack:

Yes. Fantastic. Yeah. Lots of great learnings there. Some great data you got out of the Reuse Pilot as well. Very useful. I will move us on to our third and last Reuse Pilot presentation for today and then there will be time for Q&A. And we’re actually running pretty well considering time. So, I’ll be handing over to Chad Buxton from Huskee. Chad is the Partnership Manager at Huskee. He has over 6 years’ in-depth experience working on the issue of single-use plastics from many different angles. This includes developing and managing community engagement programs, conducting reuse system trials, container deposit schemes, as a restaurant franchise sustainability manager and as a sustainable packaging supplier. So, sounds like Chad has all the skills and experience that you need for a Reuse Pilot like this.

Chad feels his current role is amazingly dynamic which suits a rapidly changing industry. With a marine science background Chad is passionate about the circular economy and excited to work on an issue that significantly affects the oceans, our planet, and people. He does this for his 2 amazing children and all of our future generations. Amazing Chad. Well done. Handing over to you now.

Chad Buxton:

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Huskee’, ‘Design for Sustainability’, ‘huskee.co’, ‘@huskee’]

Thank you for that intro. That’s very nice. And a pleasure to be here. I’m trying to get through this as quickly as possible because I’m sure everyone’s got questions. And for those that do know me I like to talk so this is going to be hard so bear with me, and I’ll get through it as quickly as I can.

So just with our pilot, how did we discover this? I was just reflecting that we found out in October last year when we did a masterclass on reuse and it’s taken this time to get to this point which is great. What we did is we reached out to existing clients and found Co-Ground who is a social enterprise and they happened to have a café running at Swinburne University on the Hawthorn campus. And so, we thought that was a great fit and a great project and so we’ve run that project with Swinburne University and Co-Ground.

I also found out that we were used in many other pilots. We helped support Responsible Cafes project and then we also found that it was used in Deakin University, which was a great pilot, the Corner Store Network which I’ve read through their report and it’s fantastic. I recommend you read it. And obviously I just saw that Investa used our cups as part of their project which is great. So that’s how we found out about it. Next slide.

So, what I’m going to be discussing today is two projects actually. Obviously, this is about offices and corporates and so while our project was a university setting I’m also going to highlight a Canva office activation that we did. Corporate offices are Huskee’s largest sector in terms of partnerships. And also, we did an events aspect to our Sustainability Victoria project but that’s kind of outside the scope of this. So, if you want to find out more about what we did with events you’ll have to read the report.

Why are we highlighting this and using this as kind of a comparison, is that reuse studies or strategies are applied differently depending on the sector and the usage cases. And so, I want to highlight that in this talk. And for any project we have some common design considerations. One is we like to have a scoping meeting to identify the needs of the project and to match those to the outcomes that a partner is trying to meet. And that depends on factors such as time, funding amounts, projected user numbers and the goals that they have. And I guess what we say is for partnership management clients can think of that as free experience consultancy talk.

The examples of differences in approach is for example the university precinct project, we limited that to 11 cafes largely due to the duration that we had to deliver the project and the number of cafés that were in the region. Canva on the other hand is an ongoing relationship. So, we’ll be able to show you kind of what a mature activation looks like because we’ve been working with Canva for about 4 years now. And they obviously have a much larger funding pool to be able to do some stuff. Huskee Swap was designed primarily for the café service and so some of the aspects of our reuse service are not necessarily needed for corporate clients if that makes sense. Next slide.

So, I just wanted to go over some of the engagement strategies that we use. Again, some common approaches for projects is we like to set a launch or an activation activity. That really helps drive uptake and I guess awareness of what you’re trying to do. We also would like to develop a communication strategy and a plan because communication is a large part of reuse. And we use onboarding workflows and toolkits internally to help drive that message and maintain engagement with the stakeholders. And we try to maintain that communication with them to manage customer success. Because everyone’s going to put a lot of effort into this, and we want to make sure that there’s some good outcomes on the other end of it.

With the Co-Ground/Swinburne pilot what we did there was we actually did an expression of interest to get some buy in from the cafes. There are some requirements and a form. Just basically filling out a form usually shows some interest or buy in to the campaign. We also provided webinars and soft launch training materials. We provide physical and digital support kits to help them get set up. And we use multiple channels to raise awareness whether that’s internal comms, whether that’s external platforms. Like in terms of university they have their own university channels. So, we like to use a variety of channels. And then we actually ran two events with the Swinburne pilot to maintain ongoing support and do that launch which was important for student awareness.

For Canva on the other hand more of the approach there was providing advice to the building and the managers on what the configuration and usage case could look like, provide internal marketing and messaging support. And it’s generally run by a team depending on the size. And it’s funny in your sector. There’s lots of titles for that particular role. I believe Leah said hers was Occupant Experience Manager, but you might find a People, Places Operations Facility Manager, Head of Office Experience. Those are the people you usually are working with in the corporate sector. And we play more of a supporting role for corporates as opposed to direct engagement for other projects. Next slide.

So, successes. What did we achieve? With the Co-Grant/Swinburne we managed to set up 10 venues. One did close down during the time of the project. And they continue to use our reuse system. With that project we eliminated over 14,000 single-use items in 3 months of reporting. And we also noticed that it was really highly engaged in how they supported projects. A lot of the cafes were reporting it’s some of the most highly engaged content that they’ve shared which was exciting to see. The outcome of that project is that Swinburne has now expanded the program to their other campuses in Croydon and Wantirna and so we’ll be working with them ongoing which is great.

Canva. This is to give you what corporates can achieve at scale. We did a report and a case study for 2022 and what Canva has done is they’ve implemented Huskee across 3 of their major global offices – Australia, UK and Singapore I believe. And in 2022 alone they’ve eliminated over 1.6 million single use cups or 19 tonnes of packaging across those 3 offices. They also saved around $400,000. If they were to buy single-use cups for what they’re drinking in the offices that’s about $400,000 in packaging costs. And that’s not including things like waste disposal costs and breakages if you’re using things like crockery or something that breaks.

I just wanted to highlight with that project this takes time. So, this wasn’t achieved overnight. It did take about 3 years to refine the system and how they’re using it in Canva. And I think another important thing with Canva, it fits their culture. They provide food and services to their employees, and they have a real coffee culture. And so, this was really important for them. And interestingly enough the initial activation with Huskee was not necessarily about sustainability. The reason why they came to us is they were having a lot of breakage and loss. And so, it was a pure financial motivation to be a part of the Huskee partnership program.

Some success recently is they’ve started to implement Huskee Renew which is a new product and we’re working on a larger collaborative project with Canva which is exciting. Next slide.

So, some of the learnings and challenges that I just wanted to highlight that we found with this particular project is time is the biggest key and factor. Reuse is a long-term behaviour change shift. And so often with these timeframes of the projects it’s hard to see that shift over time. And we want to see that those times are extended to really fully understand the benefit of reuse. Also supply chains and governance are slow. So, we had some delays due to just literally getting sign off on some of the aspects of the program. So, within a very short timeframe of 6 months that’s hard to get that stuff unless you’re a direct approver of it.

A second real learning was understanding sector stakeholders is a key to success. So, universities are quite different to corporate structures and both can be quite complex. To effectively work with these sectors, you need to understand your stakeholders. And so, I think that was important. We had regular meetings, and we’d try to identify early who do we need to work with. And you need to involve more than just the person signing off on the project. There’s a variety of stakeholders that should be involved in these types of projects.

Another one was the type of support needed depends on the sector. So, for example with the university it’s more focused on cafés in a precinct and so there’s more on ground needs and personal engagement and that’s what’s critical for that type of activation. As opposed for corporates it’s more about facilitating their communications and their understanding and providing a value add in those types of sectors. And again, this is I think where we tailor it to each sector and understand their needs.

And then finally the most important one I think or maybe just another factor is the work is often difficult to fund so it’s not necessarily directly profitable in activation for the company itself. So, unless we’re selling reusable cups. That is the main mark up for a company. A lot of this effort is spent in staffing time and engagement and that’s not directly profitable. So, I’ll come back to that in a second. Next slide.

In terms of expenses and costs we ran the Co-Ground and Swinburne project – there was about $20,000. But what I found really important there to highlight was only a quarter of that cost went to actual reusable containers. Three quarters of the cost of the project went to activation and infrastructure changes. So, a large cost there was installing a dishwasher for Co-Ground to be able to provide service at events and remote sites. There are also ongoing costs to support venues’ success. And so again that’s not factored into this project but it’s something that we assume because we want success to happen.

With Canva on the other hand corporates tend to have more capital and are less constrained about the project so they can fund upfront. They tend to buy more reusables and are generally a closed system. And there’s few ongoing costs for Huskee in those cases. So, there’s quite a difference in terms of projects and what we need to consider.

The future of Huskee is we are a design company, and we continue to expand the swap system and our end-of-life program Huskee Loop. We’ve been around since 2017 and we have a pretty strong business model. And I always found it paradoxical when I started to find that we actually grew during COVID when reusables were literally banned. So that was interesting. We continue to invest in reuse incentives and iterate on our models.

So, recommendations that we have for anyone interested in partnerships or these types of activations is you should develop a relationship directly with your solution provider. It’s a long and ongoing journey and so you should be working very closely with each other because those are the ones that are providing the service. Take the time to scope out your project. This helps you define what your needs are and helps also define the cost. So, we like to do that upfront and take that time in the beginning. You should tailor the solution to the sector. Partnership programs and needs are quite different. And we wanted to highlight that reuse is not simply about providing reusables. It’s about integrating a behaviour change and a new service. And behaviour change is a consequence of good implementation. And so again you need to think of the larger picture and saying we can provide reusables, but do we get businesses and consumers to integrate it into their normal daily life?

And finally, we just want to highlight it takes a lot of work. So, you need to be willing to fund that work both externally in terms of project support but also internally. You have to have staff available, and they need to be funded to be able to work on these projects.

And reuse isn’t easy and change in behaviour takes time. So, thanks.

Sandra Mack:

Thank you to all three presenters. That was very, very interesting. A lot of very useful information shared. In particular thank you for sharing all the detailed information on cost which is of interest and relevant to a lot of people as well and sometimes hard to get. So, what we’ll do now is we’ll open up for questions. Heather, have you had a chance to keep an eye on the chat and have you managed to select some questions that we want to discuss in a group setting?

Heather Willison:

So, there’s a couple of themes I guess. A few people were asking about the loss rate. I think Patrick did respond in the chat but maybe for Patrick directly again or for Leah if you have a sense of the loss rate in terms of people keeping cups and containers rather than bringing them back to the office?

Patrick Manley:

Yeah. Certainly, happy to add a few points to that. Because look the loss rate is a fascinating question and it’s something that we’ve studied now with all of our sites for a long time. We’ve got some quite solid data out of Sydney around loss rates because we’ve had sites up and running for 2 years so we know what the long-term loss rate is. The long and short of it down in Melbourne is that we obviously do have a loss rate. We are pending a detailed audit around if those cups are ‘lost lost’ or lost. So ‘lost lost’ is that they’re taken home and people are drinking their gin and tonics out of them. Lost is that they’re up in the lockers or left in the desk. One thing that we know from our surveying and the data we’ve collected is our drop pods are fantastic tools at driving return rates of cups. Because in a site like an office building everybody knows that that’s where those cups belong and need to go and so when there’s a cup that’s out on a desk or something it goes into that drop pod and it gets processed into our system. And as a result that’s reciprocated through all of the people’s behaviour because anyone that does anything different with a cup looks very different to the social norms of the building. So, it’s amazingly powerful how that’s driven.

So very happy to chat to anyone more about loss rate offline but that’s basically the long and short of it. So, we have a 0.5% to total uses loss rate typically at our sites. Olderfleet’s just nudging slightly above that at the moment. That’s to be expected in the early launch as people go ‘Goodness me. That looks good for my – I’ll have that cup’ or they’re up in the lockers. So, we’ve got to do that detailed audit to find all of the cups in the building and totally understand that.

Heather Willison:

Thanks Patrick. Sorry Sandra. Leah did you want to add anything to that from your perspective?

Leah Rattray:

Yeah. The only thing I’d add is that we haven’t done a formal count, but it has been discussed that we should try and do a stocktake. But it’s a good problem to have. The reason why it’s so difficult to do that is that the cups and bowls are continuing to be in circulation so to pick a time when all the bowls and cups are back, it will be an afterhours exercise and what have you. But the other telltale sign about whether or not it’s a problem is that we have had some tenants sort of come and say, ‘Is there any way that we can replenish a few bits and pieces’ but no one’s saying, ‘Our whole entire sets are gone, and we don’t have any to use’. No one’s saying that. And we can see as we walk around, they’re in the dishwashers, there’s some on the shelves, there’s people walking around with them in the retail food court. So, they’re being used which for me is the most valuable part. And I think Patrick’s assessment there, if it’s only 0.5%, that’s amazing.

Heather Willison:

Thanks Leah. I’m conscious of time. I might just ask maybe a question for you Chad. What do you think the biggest barrier is in terms of hospitality businesses implementing a reuse system and how do you sort of try and overcome that?

Chad Buxton:

I think them understanding what the benefits are and then integration of a system. Because there are many models out there and there is no one size fits all. And so, for them to understand what are the benefits, how much do I need, how do I get set up, that’s always a complex question to answer. And so, for us getting to them and getting that information to them is often very challenging. But what we want to see over time is that they don’t just set up with a system. It actually gets used. And that’s the other problem.

Heather Willison:

Thank you. Sandra how are we thinking for time? Do you want to take anything else?

Sandra Mack:

I think we can do one more and there was one which a couple of people were interested in. How would these returnable projects go in smaller towns where the cafés are in separate buildings to where the office workers are?

Chad Buxton:

I can quickly answer that. We work in rural communities. So, we’ve just done a project with Richmond Valley which we interestingly launched that during Beef Week which was a lot of farmers. And so, our system is meant to be run independently so any café can set up at any time. Obviously, a network of cafés really feed off of each other but cafés can do it alone. But that’s the Huskee system. Every system is different.

Sandra Mack:

Thanks Chad. Does anyone else have any thoughts? Leah do you?

Leah Rattray:

I was just going to – I saw a question there from Brent about the percentage occupancy for the building over the course of the pilot. So, I can’t share the exact numbers, but I can tell you that it basically doubled from the beginning of the pilot to the end of the pilot. So that’s why it was pleasing to see that the usage rates kept going up of the reusables. I hope that’s a satisfactory answer.

Sandra Mack:

Great. Thanks Leah. I feel like we can take one more question at least.

Brij Parmar:

Just going back to the implementation of the reuse system in the rural setting, I highly recommend to look up actually one of our previous webinars presented by the Village Zero. It’s actually done at the precinct level. So highly recommend. It’s on the Sustainability Victoria website on the single use plastics. Happy to pop the link in the chat but hopefully that helps.

Sandra Mack:

Thanks Brij.

Heather Willison:

And we’ll email all of these links around that we’ve been talking about as well. So, there’s lots of website resources and any other questions that we’ve seen in the chat that anyone wants to answer later on. Bit of an FAQ, recording. We can send that around to everybody.

Sandra Mack:

Great. Good. Thank you all then. Sorry. I just did realise we have gone a little bit over time but that’s okay. Thank you all for coming, for making the time. Keep an eye out for the recording being shared. We will also share the slides. And yeah, there are lots of other resources on our website that we will keep adding to. And we will also be at the Waste Expo summing up all of our learnings from the Reuse Pilots once we’ve had a bit more time to look at them. So, enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks for coming.

[End of Transcript]

Circular Economy Showcase

The Cube Wodonga & Village Zero Sandringham

Tuesday, 13 June 2023

Presented by:

moderator:

Brij Parmar

Project Advisor, Engagement Regions & Partnerships

Speakers:

Ray Purcell
President, Sandringham Traders Association Inc

Kate Stitfold
Vice President, Sandringham Traders Association Inc

Rebecca Bennell
Team Leader, The Cube Wodonga

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Circular Economy Showcase – The Cube Wodonga & Village Zero Sandringham’, ‘We will be starting shortly…’]

[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]

Brij Parmar:

So hello all and good afternoon. And welcome to our Circular Economy Reuse webinar. My name is Brij Parmar. And it is great to see so much interest in this space.

I would like to commence today’s session with an acknowledgment of the country. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands upon which I’m based today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. I also pay my respect to the traditional custodians of the lands from which you are joining us today. I acknowledge the deep connection to earth of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their invaluable contributions to our understanding of climate change and the environment.

So today I’ll provide a brief overview of our program and then we will hear from our presenters on how they’re implementing the reuse system.

There will be Q&A at the end. So just a couple of housekeeping things. Please do put your questions in the chat. But during the Q&A you’re very welcome to unmute and ask questions once we have gone through the ones in the chat asked earlier.

So to reduce the plastic pollution the Victorian Government banned six plastic items from February 2023. Hopefully most of you are aware of this and there are no surprises here. And at SV we have been working with the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action to communicate this ban and also to support hospitality businesses to implement waste avoidance and reuse solutions.

So last year we engaged three intermediaries in metropolitan Melbourne, Barwon South and Gippsland region to collect data really to understand the plastic consumption, some of the behaviours and identify some of the reuse solutions. We have presented this data in our previous masterclass which we hosted in December last year. If you’d like to learn more though please have a look at this. We will share all the links of our programs on this chat just in a bit.

We have visited over 3,400 businesses so there’s a lot of data that we collected and gave us some fantastic insights. We also published 15 reuse champion success stories. So these are the businesses not funded by SV but they’re really leading the way in terms of showing what’s possible within the context. We published some reuse posters which can be shared either on the social media or also can be downloaded and printed. Great to see such a really, really good uptake of those posters across Victoria. We also published three reuse pilot case studies which are SV funded projects and we gave to the reuse pilots.

So we kicked of these pilots in two rounds, Round 1 and Round 2. Both of these projects who are going to present today are from Round 2. So they started in February and they’re still very much running on the ground right now. In total SV has provided over $620,000 of grants in the 16 pilots across Victoria and they’re very diverse in nature. Many organisations on the Local Government are running programs such as plastic free places and also have venues where they host events. So we decided that these two projects are really, really good packaged together so we decided to present them together.

So without any further ado I would like to introduce today’s guests. First one is Ray and Kate from Sandringham Village. Just a second. So the Sandy Village plastic free project has been running in Villa Zero. Villa Zero is a local not for profit with the mission to reduce environmental impact of our local shopping strips and use them as a space for renewable energy production with reduced waste generation and recycling and repurposing of general and food waste. The ultimate aim is to lessen the impact on the environment and mitigate against climate change.

Ray is the President of Sandringham Traders Association. He’s also Director and Principal of KPA Lawyers, a law firm in Sandringham. In his role as the President of Sandringham Traders Association Ray is the principal spokesperson for traders operating within the precinct of Sandringham Village. With the support of the member traders and the Association accessibility itself is a key driver for behaviour change to more businesses and consumers to the best practice of waste management and transition towards renewable energy.

Kate is the Vice President of Village Zero. Kate’s background is in hospitality. Her experience in hospitality and operating small businesses led her to investigate and to incorporate as a part of her activities better practices in waste reduction and waste processing and championing a movement away from the single use plastic and takeaway packaging. Kate has led one of the key pillar initiatives of Village Zero being the waste management and building a circular economy and she’s also a key person in the rollout of Sandy Village plastic free project. Kate is looking to expand the project across municipalities and received a lot of interest in the project from other municipalities.

So a fantastic introduction and with my great pleasure I welcome Kate and Ray. When you’re ready please feel free to share your screen and take it from there. Thank you Kate.

Kate Stitfold:

Can you see that now?

Brij Parmar:

Not yet but you should have share button enabled on your device which we just did earlier.

Kate Stitfold:

I did. I just did the same thing that we did before.

Can you see that now?

Brij Parmar:

Yep.

Ray Purcell:

Okay. Tremendous. All right. Thanks for the introduction Brij. So I’m Ray Purcell. I’m the President of the Sandringham Traders Association. I’m also the Principal of KPA Lawyers which is a law practice based in Sandringham.

As Brij has mentioned the traders of Sandringham have got behind a project and an initiative to seek to transition Sandringham into initially if we can net zero emissions and as part of that one of the key drivers is waste management. Waste management of course being a major activity centre is an important driver towards taking action towards protection of the environment. We’re on the bay so plastics entering the waterways is something which is of significant concern to local businesses and to the local community.

The project has given us the opportunity to seek to start conversations and to work towards behavioural change from two aspects. One aspect from the traders themselves and the practices that the traders engage in but also too secondly consumers. We’ve been fortunate enough with Village Zero to have a project that’s been worked together and the key drivers of the project has been Village Zero. I’ll hand over to Kate who’s been the principal driver and the key person associated with the activity from Village Zero. Thank you Kate.

Kate Stitfold:

Thank you Ray. So Sandringham Village has 34 diverse food outlets and we recognised that a one size fits all approach was not going to be effective to reduce our single use packaging. So we undertook a wildly ambitious intention to pilot the two reusable systems. One was the BYO Containers where customers are encouraged to bring their own clean, undamaged containers for refilling at the participating venues and that was partnered very much with BYO Containers. And also the second thing we implemented are reusable Infinity Box containers and coffee cups where the customer pays a $2 deposit for an Infinity Box container or cup and then they can return that container or cup to any participating business either as a swap or a refund. And that we partner with Infinity Box to produce that.

So initially to engage our community we produced a survey which was targeted at the community to develop a strategy to reduce the single use packaging waste in Sandringham. We were really interested in understanding the challenges and opportunities faced by the hospitality venues to transition away from single use packaging and towards reusable containers. We gave away free donated drinks to everyone who completed the survey at the February and March twilight markets. In doing so we had 182 surveys responded to. 92% of those respondents said they would love to do something different and stop single use packaging. 93% said they were more likely to adopt bring your own containers if there was a discount offered. And 78% said they would take up a returnable container and cup scheme.

Some of the initial engagement we had with the community we presented the Infinity Box at the Sandringham Lifesaving Club at the Clean Up Australia Day. We had a table in the shopping centre on a Saturday morning with a couple of the female footballers to introduce the Infinity Box to the community and we gave away a container or cup to anyone who was willing to opt into the system just to kick it off. We presented the Infinity Box at the Energy Expo run by Bayside City Council. I’ve done some local radio interviews. We put posters up encouraging the reuse in as many places as possible as we could get them in the Village. We had the homewares shops displaying reusable containers and other merchandise with the posters outside their shops. We’ve done social media with Facebook and Instagram. We have a billboard in the shopping centre intersection of Bay and Beach Roads. And we also recognised we needed to engage the workers in the Village so we did a letter drop to all the non-food businesses. We also have done a letter drop to residents living in the Village and in the surrounding streets.

We are still planning to do a mailout to all the survey respondents to gain some feedback to either their experience taking their own containers to purchase takeaways or to using the Infinity Box. And if they haven’t already used them if nothing else it might prompt them to actually start using their takeaway containers. We also had a visit from the Mayor of Bayside City Council and the Ward Councillor coming to the Village to promote the BYO boxes, Infinity Box and our new Returnr Workplace Micropools.

Also we engaged the traders. So all the food vendors were personally visited and asked to complete a survey. This gave us an early indication as to who to follow up for the Bring Your Own Containers and Infinity Box systems and where to concentrate our efforts. We held an expo at the Sandy Lifesaving Club specifically for the traders but community was also welcome to attend to introduce the Infinity Box and BYO Containers. We had five business sign up initially to participate in the pilot. That was after a number of repeat visits and leaving containers with the vendors for a few days to see how their food could be presented and to test them for themselves. Since then another two have joined so we have seven in total now.

We celebrated the vendors who were the first to take the Infinity Box and BYO Containers with a social night where many of the vendors met for the first time. Ricardo from Infinity Box and Bianca from BYO Containers were also there to answer any of their questions or concerns.

At the six week point once we had the pilot underway we recognised we needed a slight change in emphasis to promote the larger businesses within the village for use of the reusable containers by providing them with a Returnr Workplace Marketpool for use by their employees. These larger business were emailed and then followed up with phone calls with an offering of an in-house information session.

We collected data. So before we implemented we had not fully determined what kind of data we were going to collect and how we were going to collect the data. Initially we were going to undertake a packaging audit and repeat at the end of the pilot but we quickly decided it was too hard to measure as all the businesses have different demands and it doesn’t really reflect any incremental change.

So before we decided the best way to collect the data I did complete a packaging audit of four of the food outlets across a week and we calculated 105,980 pieces of packaging. And if that’s multiplied across all the 34 food outlets it comes to around 900,830 pieces. And that’s a very conservative figure and doesn’t include the supermarket. So all five participating businesses in the pilot right at the start were asked to record on a daily basis how many Bring Your Own Containers, Infinity Box deposits, swaps or returns there were just by putting a line on a tally sheet as demonstrated on the screen there and that data was collected by me weekly.

We have a graph here that shows how many Infinity Box swaps and returns there were. We’re in this project more concerned about the behavioural change than the amount of pieces of packaging that we have saved. So our data collection emphasis is on how many people are taking up the option of the Infinity Box and the Bring Your Own Containers. But to date we’ve had 1,884 pieces of packaging saved, 816 BYO cups and containers, 91 Infinity Box deposits, 44 swaps and only 14 returns of the containers.

Some of the challenges that we’ve come across. Repeat visits to traders and they’re not having time to sit and talk through all the information in one sitting so it was all delivered in bite-sized bits of information. Not being able to find a time when all traders are available for group meetings so everything had to be done on an individual basis. We discovered very quickly that emails were not a very effective way of communication.

We had trialled many different types of communication. We’ve tried Messenger, we tried WhatsApp, we tried texting and calling in to find the best fit. As we’ve discovered each business needs a communication method which is tailored to them. Once the traders had agreed to participate in the pilot we had a new set of challenges. Traders were emailed and also handed a hard copy of an information booklet outlining why we are conducting the pilot and there’s a couple of pages of that pilot that’s up on the screen now that’s very hard to read for you. So we were outlining why we were conducting the pilot, the results of the community survey, implementing the BYO and Infinity Box and the pros and cons to alternative types of packaging, as well as a frequently asked questions list for the Infinity Box, posters and point of sale cards for the BYO and Infinity Box but they were not read by most people.

The traders were not putting the signs in the windows that they advertise Infinity Boxes and accepted BYO Containers even though they were all provided to them.

We also were challenged with how the traders reduced the packaging for Uber Eats another food service delivery and we need to still work through one and I’m not quite sure how to tackle. Then we have discovered a customer hesitancy about sharing a returnable cup even though it is washed by the business regardless if washed by a customer before being returned or swapped. And one of the ongoing challenges has been maintaining optimism that we can actually change people’s behaviour. Most people are aware of the impacts of plastics, coffee cups and waste in general and think it is a great idea to bring your own or opt in to a returnable system but when it comes to actually taking action they are resistant. So we’re just wondering how do we break through that block. Again that’s that behaviour change piece.

Some of our learnings that we’ve had across the journey is to have a hook to get people to take part in a survey. The best way is to be in front of people. We tried emailing the survey. It didn’t work. We also had a link on our website and that only got six responses. And access to interpreters for those traders where English is a second language. Office staff training to the venues before implementation. I still make weekly visits to the venues to see how they are going and if I can help. I’ve provided additional advertising cards to place on tables but they were not used. I suggested displaying food in the containers so customers can see the product in them and that was not taken up. We discovered the Infinity Box would be more appealing with more variety of sizes. Volunteers are key out in the Village talking to traders and asking if the traders will accept Bring Your Own Containers and do they have the Infinity Box.

We discovered the venues with the greatest number of Infinity Box usage are the ones where the owners have trained their staff and are talking to their customers actively promoting the Bring Your Own Container and Infinity Box. And they were the ones I thought that would be the most likely to really take it up and that is the smoothies and wrap shop and the charcoal chicken.

What was unexpected was the bakery who has a large number of packaged products opted to try the Infinity Box to replace their Styrofoam trays and clingwrap that they’re using now. Also the green grocer experimented with the Infinity Box to see if they could use that as an alternative for their fresh product but their boxes were unsuitable for them. However they did read the information booklet I supplied and they are looking into cardboard replacements for their fruit and veggie display which is a great outcome.

We recognised we needed to reach all the businesses who have large numbers of staff in the Village who use the cafes and restaurants and to that we did a letter drop. The real estates and the medical centres in the Village have been offered the Returnr Workplace Micropools.

So our learnings as Village Zero Sandringham was to try and work within the capacity of the volunteer team’s available hours. As it is our first major project I don’t think we fully anticipated the number of hours that would be involved and it has turned out to be pretty much a full time position for the project leader.

The main costs associated with our trial was developing the social media campaign and the printing of posters, the design and running of the billboard and the ads in The Guardian, the Infinity Box subscriptions which we paid for for the first three months of the pilot. And Ricardo from Infinity Box has agreed to reduce the subscription fee ‘til the end of the year to encourage the traders to continue with the Infinity Box so we can maintain any momentum we have created. We as Village Zero Sandringham purchased some of the Infinity Boxes for use at community events like the twilight markets to help promote that zero waste message.

We’ve also purchased some Returnr Workplace Micropools to be implemented in offices and medical centres throughout the Village. Data collection and reporting. And I’ve just got an idea there of the number of hours that we have spent on the pilot. So the coordinator or leader, myself, has put in over 400, collectively the volunteers 500, and in-kind hours have been up to about 140 at this stage.

So finally some of our recommendations for implementing a system like ours. Give yourselves longer than six months. And because we wanted the Bring Your Own system and Infinity Box containers to be in the cafes and restaurants for three months of the pilot our marketing campaign was a bit behind when we launched with the businesses. So we could have done with a little bit more time in the planning. Have your marketing strategy and collateral ready to go before implementing. Have a communications plan in place. And clearly define stakeholders like your traders, workers in the villages, offices and the wider community. It was great to have the completed surveys and data ready to feed back to the traders. Set aside a lot of hours to talk to all the traders and prepare for many repeat visits. And it would be advantageous to have a paid person to coordinate the project and volunteers. And create partnerships. We created partnerships with the Bayside Community Climate Action Group, the 3191 Beach Patrol, 3191 Love our Streets, the Sandringham Lifesaving Club, Sandringham street art projects, the 3191 Facebook page, the Sandringham Traders Association, Brad Rowswell our state MP, Zoe Daniel our federal MP and the Bayside City Council.

Some of the untapped groups that we haven’t yet reached are the Chatty Cafes, mothers groups and our local schools. And we also discovered the traders responded really well to a social evening where many of them met for the first time. The sense of community within the traders is a key success to the systems. Thank you very much.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Kate and thanks Ray for some really, really fantastic insights.

Feel free to put any questions you may have. And thank you again for that. And I’ll introduce our next project all the way from Wodonga, Rebecca Bennell. Rebecca is a team leader at The Cube Wodonga. Give me just a moment.

At The Cube Wodonga which is a performing arts and conference centre owned and operated by Wodonga City Council. In her current role Rebecca manages the venue booking and hospitality services within the venue, working with a panel of external providers as well as management of The Cube Bar. She works with the Council’s sustainability coordinator to develop and implement processes and procedures to help ensure the delivery of the Council’s waste management plans and the single use plastic policies on the events within The Cube. Her role also provides the guidance and education for the venue’s clients, hirers, patrons and other stakeholders to support the compliance with the Council’s waste minimisation plan.

The circular reuse grant has allowed the venue to invest in reusable cups and additional equipment to help reduce the amount of single use items used for the events and daily operations within the venue. So welcome Rebecca.

Rebecca Bennell:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

I’ll just share my screen.

Can you see the presentation?

Unidentified Female:

Yes.

Rebecca Bennell:

Great. So The Cube Wodonga is a performing arts centre. So we can host events theatre style for about 400 up to standing room only concerts for up to 2,000. We do lots of free community events and can host up to 500 events each year all of which have catering, use of the bar etcetera in different scales. So for us during COVID we took over the management of our hospitality and changed over our café lease and took over the running of our Cube Bar. So we had several points where we can’t use glass so we needed to use plastic and we were using bio cups or paper cups for tea and coffee and determined that the amount of waste that we were producing didn’t fit in with Council’s single use policy which was coming into play as well as the upcoming ban on plastics.

We also knew from our green team and the sustainability coordinator Robyn at Council that the Albury Wodonga waste transfer station was not able to process the bio cups. So even the biodegradable cups that we thought we were using to not be using plastics weren’t actually going into green waste and being able to broken down. They’re just going to the red waste. So that was really the key trigger for us applying for this grant. And a member of our team Nicole was in discussions with Robyn about the grant and found out about it so we applied to replace all of our plastic bio cups for plastic reusable cups for tea and coffee replacing the paper ones and the same for water cups within the venue. So we used to have water stations with bio cups as well.

We knew that by changing those catering models and running the bar and tea and coffee stations we were purchasing a lot of bio cups and paper cups and we also found out that the bio cups as I said weren’t able to be processed. We know that for our large events we wanted to find a sustainable and friendly option that wasn’t going to be too difficult for us to manage. We decided to purchase a series of different mugs and cups to suit the different event needs. And the first thing we did prior to all of those items coming on site was to carry out a waste audit which we did with our local bin services up here in Albury Wodonga. And that was really one of the best things that came out of the whole project was we discovered that the way that our café operator, our patrons and our cleaners were disposing of rubbish was completely incorrect and we were getting lots of wrong items in the wrong bin. Even though we’d done a series of educational posters and signs within the venue and had the three bin system within the space people were still really confused over what items should go where. So this project really identified for us that we needed to communicate much better about the processes and items that we had and where people should be kind of putting them.

We also wanted to implement a water filter tap that goes onto our bar so that people can refill their bottles. We have lots of conference attendees who bring their own water bottles. So rather than using plastic bottles on tables or water jugs and glasses people could bring their own bottle and refill it with filtered refrigerated water.

We knew based on the previous purchases that we were buying between 15,000 bio cups and about 10,500 paper cups but that was over the last two years which we still have not returned back to pre-COVID levels. So we know that moving forward that number would significantly increase.

Our engagement strategy was essentially to meet with our key caterers. So we have a panel of five caterers who provide all of our catering. We manage the tea and coffee for some clients depending on which caterer’s providing their catering as well as our café operator. So we talked with them about the project and what we were doing and if they would be willing to continue to use our cups for their events as well rather than bringing in single use plastics or paper cups. And so far they’ve all been really happy to join that process with us which has been fantastic.

Staff training. So we had several team meetings with the core staff as well as our wider casual team. We have between 20 and 25 casuals depending on which events and weeks it is. And so they were all taken through the process of how we set up, pack down, store etcetera, as well as the need for additional signage and the extra kind of communication that we’ll need to do with our patrons and client attendees as the events happen so that they’re aware of where the cups should go. Not in the bin but in the return tubs.

We also sent out an EDM with all of the information about the project initiative that we were doing to our database of about 7,000 people to kind of let them know what was happening within the venue as well as several social media posts. We also have posters around the venue and on our internal monitors which kind of scroll through different shows as well as the information about the reuse and recycle.

And we were also really lucky that one of our first events where we used our recycled cups was the business expo. So we had lots of local businesses on site that we were able to kind of talk to and show them the reusable cups in action. So that was really great.

The challenges and learnings. So the biggest learning has been the time and staff that was required for that setup and that initial time. We recently had our first large event with over 400 guests and used all three types of our reusable cups which was fantastic. But we needed to allocate about a day before. Two staff came in and we had to unpack, wash and setup everything because everything had arrived and was in boxes. So that initial setup wasn’t considerable but it was still something that we needed to kind of forward plan.

We then also know that we’re really lucky that we had four commercial dishwashers on site already so that was not something that we needed to purchase. Highly recommend if you’re going to do something with the recyclable cups that you need those fast and very good commercial dishwashers so that cleaning and packing away is not a major issue. And we found that it’s not too difficult for us.

Storage was an issue. We like every other venue I’m sure in the world have limited storage space. So we had to make sure we were finding the best kind of racks on wheels and tubs and stuff so that we could store stuff securely and keep them free of dust and all of that sort of stuff when they’re not being used but easy to bring out when we do need them which often is in a quick turnaround from one event to the other.

We also found that data collection was the most difficult particularly as the first two months we weren’t super busy. So we were collecting the data on the reusable cups used. So we’re definitely seeing that improve over the next couple of months and knowing from that initial bin audit where all of the rubbish was in so many of the wrong bins it was difficult to get a final number of the cups that were being used within a week which was fairly frustrating. But we’ve come up with other ways to kind of determine that based on the stock that we’ve had and how much we’ve gone through prior to implementing the reusable cups.

We also discovered because our venue can be used in a variety of ways we didn’t want any fixed signage so we’ve got portable stands and laminated signs that we can kind of pin up wherever we need them, wherever we set up the water stations. And we also discovered that people like to pick up the cups and then walk away so we were finding cups in really random locations around the building. So we added additional tubs and collection stations with very clear signage and made sure that the front of house staff were doing little runs around the event throughout the day to ensure they were collecting cups and just kind of notifying people of where the collection points were. And that all seems to have worked really well without adding too much additional workload to the staff on those events.

The successes. So we’ve also required that all of our caterers use our reusable cups and as I said before they’ve all taken that up with ease I guess you’d say. In some instances we’ll assist them with the venue staff who are booked on at the time but they’ll usually be able to pick up the cleaning of those cups with the rest of their equipment without too much hassle.

By using the reusable cups we’ve also been able to reduce the number of bin options that we have out for events which has also ensured that patrons are putting green waste in the correct bin and the red rubbish in the correct bin. So that’s been really successful. Making the signage and the additional advertising throughout the space has made that really clear which is good. Cleaning and the management of the water cup stations that we have in the venue every day has been determined to be quite manageable. It’s not an extra staff member and it’s not heaps of extra time for our staff on the day. And the high use of cups during our performances indicates that there’s been a quick and positive change for our patrons. We’ve also had lots of really great feedback through our patron surveys after events. They’re all loving that it’s a real cup, not a piece of plastic, all of that sort of stuff. So it’s been going really well.

We’ve also had great feedback from our clients and attendees and you can see we’ve had La Trobe come through and they all love the glasses. And you can see the return tubs and our water stations and then the juice cups. We’ve also got coffee cups and the blue reusable cups for within the venue for our smaller events. And we’ve got the wheely trolleys for the water stations and then the collection tubs down the bottom. That seems to work really well. And then for larger events we just add additional tubs and collection stations so that people know where they need to return them to. And this is the cups at our different stations and the wine glasses. And then some of our beautiful staff going around and collecting those cups during events to just help patrons know where they should go. We also created some signage that we had in and around the space.

So our expenses. So as we already had several commercial dishwashers our main costs were the glasses, mugs and cups along with the storage racks and the filtered water tap for our bar which is another one of the issues that we’ve had is getting it on site and installed. We’re still waiting for that to happen. Contractors are very difficult to reign in at this point in time.

We bought a few more items than we thought we would need just to allow for breakages or theft or people putting them in the wrong bins. We’ve used them nearly every day for the last two months and I think we’re only missing three cups out of the entire lot which is pretty good. The additional staff spend on the initial setup was about ten hours split over a day and a half and two staff. And that was just to get the racks, tubs and everything ready for that first event. And we have modified our event staff, the bar staff essentially, adding an extra 30 minutes to the start and finish of their shifts just to get those event cups ready and packed down and cleaned and put away again at the end. But so far that’s not increased our costs significantly so far which is fantastic.

We’re reviewing our fees and charges so we may include additional costs to our hirers for those staff but at this point we haven’t seen a significant jump in our staff expenditure to warrant passing that on to the client at this stage. And we are looking into getting some more volunteers to help assist patrons not only with the cups but with that general rubbish education around which stuff needs to go into which bin.

My recommendation is definitely do a bin audit. It’s very interesting if you run a venue and you don’t have a lot of control over what goes in your bins. That was really interesting for us and has led to some great learnings. And I definitely suggest water stations on wheels. That’s made life much easier for us. So we can relocate those stations very quickly to wherever the event needs them.

And that’s about it.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you Rebecca. There’s some fantastic insights in there. I think all of us would agree to some extent the waste space is very complex and always the waste issues especially when it comes to which item goes into which bin is always very complex and it changes sometimes depending upon the context. But it’s great to see your different stakeholders whether it’s your catering people or your hirers who really came on board and supported you with all this. So yeah great work over there. I welcome if anyone would like to ask any questions. We also have some of our fantastic SV and [0:41:43] team members over here. But feel free to ask any questions if you may have. I do have some questions.

Actually okay. I’ll kick of these questions from here especially to Sandy Village, Kate. Could you please unmute? Yep. There you go. Could you please tell me what is one of the biggest surprises especially when you launched this project initially that you didn’t expect?

Kate Stitfold:

Probably one of the biggest surprises was the lack of people actually taking up the options when they seemed so excited and so keen and so willing to do it when you talk to them. But it’s not translating.

Brij Parmar:

Okay. And did you find that sometimes often doing too much education after that or versus having systems there at the shop – which one had a bit more impact?

Kate Stitfold:

The ones that actually actively push it obviously had a better impact.

Brij Parmar:

At the shop itself?

Kate Stitfold:

Yeah. In the shop itself. They’re actively talking about the Infinity Box and educating their customers and have done staff training inside, are the ones that have been the most successful.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Kate. Often it’s very challenging because especially in hospitality there’s so much staff turnover and there is always the notion of retraining the staff. Rebecca what is the lifespan of the glasses that you have?

Rebecca Bennell:

Well we’ve been told that it’s between three to five years but I’ll let you know. I’m not sure how they’ll go through the commercial – we’ve got them labelled as well. So we talked a lot about how we were going to make sure people didn’t throw them out because some of them do look like you could throw them out. So they’ve got little labels on them that say The Cube Return Me. So I imagine that’s probably going to be the first thing that comes off and then we’ll see what the frosting of the glasses look like in a few years going through a commercial dishwasher. We do use different dishwashers for different cups depending on what their thickness is. So the hotter ones we don’t use on the wine glasses because we’re not sure how they’ll go. But they’ve all been rated dishwasher proof and we’ve been told between that three to five. We’d probably have a longer life on glassware but we’d break more.

Brij Parmar:

Yep. That has been highlighted in the chat as well. Thanks. And to the audience I would actually like to say this. Often some of the especially behaviour change campaign needs a bit of time as Kate and Ray have pointed out before. But especially looking at the timeline of this project, so the SV single use plastic program, we really didn’t have a very long time for this project. And especially in terms of data collection and data audit that is a bit of a more expensive part of the project. And looking at the timeline we had to condense that quite a lot. But with that said some of the project partners have done an outstanding job.

Rebecca did you purchase the cups? Who did you purchase the cups from?

Rebecca Bennell:

So we got them from several different places. The white coffee cups we got from the Flying Fork. I’m just trying to see. And Better Cup is where we got the stemless wine glasses with the name tag on. And I think Barware is where we got all of the racks from. And I’m pretty sure Better Cup did the drinking juice ones as well.

Brij Parmar:

Cool. Thanks Rebecca. And Kate and Ray I remember in our earlier conversation you had the Infinity Box only at the traders, especially the shopkeepers, but then you decided to expand it to the office or the workers who work within the precinct as well. Could you just explain a bit more on that transition point as well, like why and what are the early indicators that made you make that decision?

Ray Purcell:

Sure. So thanks Brij. So I think we all have to remember we started at a zero base. So I mean at different times we got a little bit frustrated with what we saw as a slow uptake but then we take a step back and we realise we’re coming from a zero base. So we had three targets. So originally we thought okay well let’s get them into those food and beverage businesses and let’s have it driven by businesses and let’s have businesses at the point of sale push the option of people using the reusable packaging and encouraging people to bring in their own containers that they could use themselves.

We identified quite quickly the challenge of that is staff. And everyone’s busy and notwithstanding there’s goodwill the shop proprietors might be one person or maybe two people. So they’re looking to get the person coming to the counter in and out as quickly as they possibly can and if there’s another process involved with taking a person’s container, filling that container and then getting it out it proved to be a challenge.

So then obviously as part of what we’re doing we’re working on the consumer and the community and trying to educate them and make them aware but then we also identified that there are a lot of businesses and professionals in Sandringham Village and it was obvious that those people were frequenting particularly with respect to coffee the outlets. And they might be walking 20/30 metres from their office but they would then get a takeaway coffee and walk back to their office with a takeaway cup. So what we identified was the need to engage with those businesses and engage with the staff of those businesses and provide them with an option. Hence we identified Returnr as a possibility.

And what’s important is visual cues. So what we’ve identified is until there’s a learned behaviour, until it becomes a habit, you have to be constantly reminded of the behaviour. So what we identified is that we need to have a visual cue in those workplaces to remind people to take the keep cup or the reusable coffee cup. Because otherwise even if someone has a keep cup – and we have them in my office for instance – they spend more time in the cupboard than they do being used. So it’s hoped that by having the display with the Returnr receptacles available on the way out that that will serve as a visual cue and then over a period of time, hopefully not more than four weeks, maybe eight weeks, you don’t need the visual cue anymore because it’s a learned behaviour. I mean we’ve really got to ingrain learnt behaviours. So that’s why we pivoted in that direction.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Ray. That’s some really, really good insight. And with that said especially implementing new behaviours or creating new habits often takes multiple routes because what we have learned through our project or our program throughout 16 different reuse pilots is different reuse systems work differently depending upon the context. And what I mean by that is different reuse systems – for example the office building versus university cafeteria versus the local shopping precincts. So each requires its own unique kind of flavour. And also this is reflective of your local demographic, local businesses and things like that.

So if there are any further questions I would love to hear it on here. There is just a question. Are you okay to share the copy of your presentation if it’s possible?

Ray Purcell:

Sure.

Kate Stitfold:

Yep.

Brij Parmar:

Cool. Fantastic. Thank you all.

[End of Transcript]

Circular Economy Showcase

Reuse Pilots at Universities

Tuesday, 20 June 2023

Presented by:

moderator:

Brij Parmar

Project Advisor, Plastics, Sustainability Victoria

Panellists:

Ryan Pane
Manager, Sustainability Programs, Deakin University

Xiao Yan Li
Sustainability Coordinator, La Trobe University

Lulu Meehan-Welham
Sustainability Project Development Coordinator, Monash University

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Circular Economy Showcase – Reuse pilots at universities’, ‘We will be starting shortly…’, with image of two hands holding two white cups with text on the cups saying ‘The Reusable Revolution’]

[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]

Brij Parmar:

So good afternoon everyone. And it’s great to see some of you. Welcome back again. This is our third topic to discuss, the reuse pilots of circular economy. My name is Brij. I’m just going to mute everyone.

And I would like to commence today’s session with an acknowledgment of the country. So I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands upon which I’m based today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. I also pay my respect to the traditional custodians of the lands from which you’re joining us today. I acknowledge the deep connection to the earth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their invaluable contributions to our understanding of climate change and the environment.

So today I’ll provide a brief overview of our program and then our amazing presenters from the university sector are going to showcase their reuse pilots, reuse systems. So just the key updates from us. Last year we visited over 3,400 businesses to collect data to understand the consumption and some of the behaviours related to the single use plastics. We have outlined some of this in our previous masterclass. Highly recommended to go and see that if you’re interested. We have shared some success stories of some of the businesses, how they’re leading reuse systems in their small to medium food servicing businesses. We have lots of posters and communication available if you would like to implement a similar system in your settings and we are publishing more and more pilot case studies from the reuse pilots.

So if you remember last year we had a masterclass from the University of Melbourne. Thank you University of Melbourne especially Sue and Amelia who shared their outstanding program Choose to Reuse with us.

And we kicked off these 16 pilots because we’re really keen to understand the visibility of the reuse system in different settings over here. So SV provided over 620,000 [0:02:19] projects which many of them are very diverse, so from ice-cream shop to university to office building. So we are seeing some really, really interesting insights into this space. Our work – I’ll share the link but also if you just scan this code. Basically all of our work sits on that page which soon are going to be updated with a few more other additions into it. So I’m quite excited to share that work with you.

But that’s enough from us. I’ll introduce our first speaker. So our first speaker is from Deakin University, Linden Raybould and Ryan Pane. The Deakin University team supports the development and implementation of sustainable strategies and initiatives across seven key pillars. Deakin University has set significant targets demonstrating our commitment to reducing waste and embracing circular economic principles. So by 2025 further reduce waste to landfill purpose to ten kilograms and by 2030 to zero waste to landfill by applying waste avoidance and circular economy principles.

So Deakin is currently defining its voice in circular economy strategy and implementation roadmap to support the university’s commitments and driving the integration of circular economy principles into their operations. So welcome Ryan and Linden. So excited to have you. Please go ahead and share your screens and looking forward to it.

Ryan Pane:

Thanks very much Brij. I’ll just share screen here.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Deakin University’, ‘Circular Economy Showcase’, ‘Reuse Pilot’, ‘Deakin University’]

Hopefully everybody can see that now.

So thanks Brij and welcome everybody, and thanks for the opportunity to talk to you guys today about our reuse pilot program here at Deakin. So I guess going back to 2022 we learnt of the grant funding through Sustainability Victoria and obviously we were very lucky to receive part of that funding. And we decided to utilise that into a pilot program at our Waurn Ponds campus down here in Geelong. It was chosen that campus really because it’s one of our larger cohorts but also the fact that the three main food areas are centrally located and could be easily kind of incorporated into this test bed.

So the aim of the program really was to try and eliminate all single use plastics out of those food venues. So that really came off the back from this grant of the Victorian Government banning the single use plastics and we decided to take that even further and say well let’s reduce all disposable items out of our food venues so inclusive of takeaway cups and disposable food packaging which were being utilised in those hospitality venues. So we took that as a real opportunity to try and go to 100% reusable. And you can see there the three main hospitality venues that we had here or the ones that we targeted. We have Market Hall. That’s really a big kind of food court operation. It’s primarily hot food, larger items, and then some coffees, salads, cakes, that type of thing. And then we have Barista Bar and Mr Tod which are more smaller café style operators. So that’s higher volumes of coffee and then smaller food items. So they were the three that we were working towards.

So initially we worked on our stakeholder engagement. So that came about through working with our hospitality manager here at Deakin and then connecting in with the vendors, the staff and getting them on board, explaining the program, what we had in plan, what were trying to do with it, and learning from them around I guess the operational side of things and considerations that we had to put in. We also worked in with our fellow team members in the campus operations area particularly around working with our cleaning staff and getting that into operation and how is that going to help to collect all of these reusable items around the university and get them back to the vendors. And then we had to communicate out obviously to our customers, our student staff and visitors and we did that through a number of ways with internal communication, through staff and student channels. Myself and Linden spent a lot of time down there particularly over the first few weeks of the pilot and then also with our campaign signage which I will get to in a minute here.

So we worked with a local design company to come up with really this branding and signage. We wanted something that was really bold and engaging and tried to sell the message. And this is what they came up with for us and we ran with it. So it really centred around this idea of lending a hand to wipe out waste, getting us all on board together to make that difference. So another key message in this was around the little acts making a big impact and that was what we really tried to sell this messaging on. And then we had the three kind of more simplistic messages there of the grab it, the use it and the return it just to try and sell I guess the system for what we were trying to do with the reusables.

So we had multiple options there as you can see, the campaign signage which went out via emails and things like that. We had the digital signs there, the decals and stickers and then over time we created the pull up banners just to create more visual effect down in the café areas. And this signage also went around our collection stations as well.

There’s an example of a collection station there in the image.

So I guess the two big challenges for us that came out of this program as we started it was firstly there was a lack of perceived takeaway options. So as I mentioned earlier we decided to go quite bravely for 100% reusable items in our cafes and with that came about that people thought there was no takeaway option available to them. So we fielded quite a few concerns around that and it was about communicating that message that there was options available, they could take these items away, they just had to return them back to us. Or they could bring their own things like keep cups as well and use it that way.

And then probably the biggest challenge that we faced throughout this whole thing was maintaining the stock levels. So our hospitality manager decided to go for a really – he wanted that sort of more premium feel. He wanted to really encourage people to stay in and sit in and have a really nice experience dining in at our cafes. So he went for some pretty nice items. You can see some examples there of the Huskee cups and the bowls that were chosen. And we got good feedback on those and they were really nice items. The downside was that people didn’t return them so we started to lose our stock levels considerably and that impacted I guess the amount of reusable items that we could push out going forward.

So as part of all of this as well we pushed out a customer survey. So this was a digital survey that we created. So we had QR codes that people could scan and then we also went around the café venues and asked people to fill it in for us. And this was just a bit of a snapshot here. So we had 87 respondents there and you can see the breakdown of cohort. And then overwhelmingly we were getting some really positive feedback. So people were really supportive of the idea. They loved the fact that we were offering this out. They really liked the items and the fact that we were trying to make the impact on the single use items. But in saying that they still decided they didn’t want to return said items so that was a bit of a contrast for us there.

But that brings us to our successes. So in spite of those challenges we still made some really great progress and some significant impact here. So you can see that so far from the start of March through to the end of May we’ve removed more than 32,000 items from landfill which is shown there in the breakdown. Around 14,000 items in cutlery, 6,000 in coffee cups and nearly 12,000 there in the food packaging. So we were still able to have a really significant impact and this was just a fantastic result and probably in some ways exceeded what we were initially thinking, and was surprising given some of the challenges that we did face with the stock levels.

Also worth noting in here is that these numbers don’t include nearly 6,000 keep cup sales as well. So that could be factored in that happened which was really, really great and it’s been a real positive message that we’ve been able to put out to our community to say thank you and to show the impact that this does have by doing these types of programs.

This is a breakdown of how we used I guess our grant money. So I guess the most significant purchase there was that we put in a new big commercial dishwasher and drier into the Market Hall area and that serviced all of the dishwashing for those three cafes for all our cups, cutlery, crockery. Then we had the purchase of that crockery and cutlery and cups. The collection stations that you saw was the actual cabinetry as well as the stainless steel trolleys for collection. And then we had all our signage design, installation and costs as well. So that’s that one.

So I guess our recommendations going forward. One of the big things we learnt and would be important for others as well is when we’re promoting a new initiative like this particularly going 100% reusable is to get the information out there early to give people the time to really soak it in and understand it and learn from it and push it across multiple channels. So we felt like we were giving people time and we felt like we were getting out through the channels but we learnt over time that we still needed more of that. So get in early and get in lots would be my recommendation there.

We also would consider in the future having student ambassadors and that type of approach in the venues just to talk to customers, get the message around, teach people about what it is that we’re doing, why we’re doing it and the impact that it can have and how it all works. And myself and Linden did that a lot but it would have been nice to probably have more of that in the future.

Further recommendations. Some sort of branding probably on the cups. Because we went with the Huskees some people thought they were still throwaway options, some people thought that we were giving them away and they could just take them. So probably having some sort of branding there or maybe a less desirable option for people to try and eliminate some of that stock level loss would be helpful as well. And then consider going into at base swap programs or some type of an incentive whether that’s further discounts. We do give discounts for keep cups and things like that but whether they got more discount for reusable items, things of that nature, would be something worth considering as well.

And then our future state. At the moment our hospitality manager is going to take this and run with it a little bit. And so it’s how we integrate this into our other campuses to continue it and keep making the impact across a larger scale. And so the focus at the moment is really around the dine in option and how we get people using that. Because particularly with the food we can still make a real significant impact with our packages there and then how we integrate some options for the takeaway cups particularly. So whether it’s buying a lid and bringing your own lid back each time and having a reusable option that’s both dine in and takeaway, these are all things that are being explored.

And then integrating that further into our waste reduction strategies going forward and how we meet our commitments. You can see a picture there of our waste recovery wall. So that same signage has come through into all of those. So it’s selling that same type of message and expanding that out further.

So that’s it from me and that’s Deakin’s story. And be happy to answer questions later on but hopefully you got something from that. Thank you.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you. Thanks Ryan. And yeah love seeing all the actions or the things on the screen so great to see. And also since some of the people have joined here during the presentation, so just a quick highlight. Please feel free to put in a question in the chat. We have allocated some time at the end for Q&A. And this webinar will be recorded and published. So if you have to leave early or would like to share with others we have you covered.

So our next presenter is Xiao Yan from La Trobe University. Xiao Yan is a sustainability coordinator within the sustainability and masters planning team in the infrastructure and operations at La Trobe University. She’s also the project manager for the reuse pilot program, the Reusable Revolution. In her current role Xiao Yan supports the university’s sustainability goals through sustainability reporting such as climate active recertification of campuses and managing other initiatives to promote sustainable transport, waste management, sustainability volunteer program, etcetera. She is currently drafting the new waste management plan to get La Trobe one step closer to the zero waste. Welcome Xiao Yan.

Xiao Yan Li:

Thank you Brij. I’ll just share my screen now.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘La Trobe University’, ‘The Reusable Revolution’, ‘Xiao Yan Li’, Project Manager/Sustainability Coordinator’, with image of two hands holding two white cups with text on the cups saying ‘The Reusable Revolution’]

Okay. So first of all thank you Brij for having me and thank you SV for the opportunity for this partnership for the reuse pilot program. My name is Xiao Yan. I’m from La Trobe University and I’m the project manager for the reusable revolution, our reuse crockery pilot program, and I’m also the sustainability coordinator at La Trobe University.

So first I’d like to do an acknowledgment of country. So La Trobe University proudly acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land where all our campuses are located on. We recognise that Indigenous Australians have an ongoing connection to the land and the university values their unique contribution to both the university and wider Australian society. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people as the traditional owners of the Kulin nation where I’m located at today and I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

So first I’ll just show you a couple of videos. I am in the one on the right because the social team asked me to do it. So throughout the videos you will see our signage, our logo, our trolley and the dishwash hub and I’ll just start with the video on the left.

[START VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[Visual of a coffee shop using reusable cups and then the consumers returning the used cup and plate to the return station, two people seated at a table drinking from reusable cups]

[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

And now the next one.

[START VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[Text saying ‘When you choose re-usable cups and plates on campus’ with visual of a female taking her used reusable cup and plate and placing in a return bin]

[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

Okay. Great. So about the project. La Trobe University launched the reusable revolution, a reuse crockery program at its Melbourne Bundoora campus in February this year. So the project totally cost over $114,000 with Sustainability Victoria funding $70,000 of that and La Trobe University funding $43,000 both in cash and also in-kind. The pilot period was for 17 weeks from the 20^th of February on Monday to Friday the 16^th of June for a total of 17 weeks. So we now actually have a total of eight retailers on board, so retailers ranging from cafes with majority of sales being coffees and sandwiches to fried chicken places, Asian noodle, rice, fresh stir fry, takeaway places and also Indian food.

So with crockery types we started off with six crockery types, so two sized cups, two sized bowls and two sized plates and then we introduced cutlery, so spoons and forks in week 11. The delay in cutlery introduction is just due to our hesitancy with contamination as we have an on site green waste, organic waste processor.

So also about the program, the reusable crockery includes what I mentioned before and they’re free to use for customers. So when they are done they simply return the crockery to one of our five collection trolleys located at our Bundoora campus in the Agora which is our food court. So the retailers are supported by the provision of clean crockery and replenishment whenever they are required supported by the engagement of a dedicated Cirka who is our cleaning partner – Cirka staff – between 12:00 to 4:00pm Monday to Friday. There is also a dishwash hub centrally located through our food court that is dedicated to wash and the storage of the reusable crockery.

So how did the grant come about? So last year I attended a Choose to Reuse Masterclass hosted by SV and the University of Melbourne and from that then we were known about the application process and the funding opportunity. So then from that I had asked our executive team if we could apply for this fund and create a business case for it.

I wanted to highlight some of the outcomes of the pilot program. So in week 11 we conducted a survey with over 560 respondents and 92% said that they loved or liked the reusable revolution. We’ve also had a 325% uptake of reusables since week one which is pretty incredible. And we have washed over 10,000 single use items with 361 kilograms of waste diverted from landfill. As you saw before we had a few videos that were launched on the official La Trobe University Instagram and TikTok pages. So they have collectively received over 136,000 views which is pretty incredible.

So how did we bring the stakeholders together? Number one collaboration is key. Before we applied for the funding we needed to get approval from our executive leader. We needed to make a plan about the program. I needed to source the place that the dishwash hub was going to be located and ensure that it was located centrally to the Agora our food court. We also needed really good relationships with Cirka and FAS once we received the funding. This is because Cirka our cleaning partner is essential because they are the ones who are replenishing the dishes and washing the dishes and it’s really important that they have a really transparent and good relationship with the retailers. FAS as well which is our Facilities Asset Services management team who directly work with Cirka and also the retailers.

Now for the engagement strategy. So we had various mediums of engagement, in person, surveys, giveaways and articles. So I’ll just run through what we’ve done before, during and ongoing. So before we launched the program we released a few articles on our intranet and student comms website then we also had a website launch on our sustainability website for La Trobe and we had a pre-launch survey and giveaway. We used Frank Green water bottles as giveaways because we knew people would love them and they are very, very popular.

So at the launch of the Reusable Revolution we did giveaways during O week at our sustainability stand. We gave away over 300 sets of reusable cutlery to students and staff as well as over $2,000 worth of food and drink vouchers served only on reusable crockery as part of our giveaways. We had high engagement with sustainability contacts such as our Facebook page and our email mailing list.

Some of our ongoing engagement strategies included embedding this program into our existing sustainability events such as Bikers Brekkie where every month we give out free breakfast and coffee vouchers for those who ride their bikes to the university. So as soon as the program began we ensured that all of our free breakfasts and coffees were only served on reusables. In week 11 we did a survey and a giveaway and I’ll talk about that a little bit later. We have also a group of volunteers who are the sustainability leaders who are all students and they went out in some of the earlier weeks just to talk with the general public about the program and then they engaged with over 85 groups of people within a two week slot. We also conducted multiple social media campaigns with giveaways embedded in those videos and they were extremely popular, and we also post monthly articles with key statistics.

So some of the challenges and learnings of the program. So setting up the program we had our crockery delayed due to COVID-19, the pandemic in China. So we sourced our crockery from China because we wanted to have our branding and also customised in sizing as well. And we wanted to do a soft launch. So our official launch date was orientation week but we actually wanted to do a soft launch two weeks before. Unfortunately just due to the delay we had to really, really push for the crockery to come in time. They did but we weren’t able to do the soft launch like we wanted to and we just started with the hard launch during O week.

The cost of the cleaners was also a big challenge and also learning, thinking about how we manage that cost ongoing now that the project continues business as usual. During the pilot we also had some other issues such as dishwasher issues. As I was the project manager I ordered detergent for the dishwasher and I definitely didn’t realise that you needed machine detergent, not handwashing detergent. So there was a lot of foaming in the dishwasher that wasn’t meant to be there. We solved this by having a dishwasher contractor.

Some of the learnings we had was staff’s belief in the value of the program was really, really important in the success. So staff members who loved the program or staff members who already brought their own coffee cups for example, they were able to create a really big influence within their direct teams and their team members in uptaking of the program. We also did an order of missing and damaged stock about midway through towards the end. We had about 20% of the small cups missing with the remaining amount not at a significant level of crockery missing. But we still had about 20% of cups unopened, 30% of bowls and 20% of plates still unopened. And towards the end of our pilot we actually purchased 700 of each size of the cups to refill stock which is a 63% restock.

So for the uptake of the program some of the challenges we experienced is that communication through customers, staff, students and visitors was really difficult. We had signage everywhere. All our trolleys had signage as well, as well as our dishwash hub which you saw in the video was a big room painted all green on the outside with really, really big decal. Even though we tried all those engagement strategies I think our reach was still limited in this day and age where staff is inundated with information and emails, and so are students. Students are faced with information overload all the time from the university.

Another challenge we found was retailers offering reusables. Our retailers did offer reusables significantly at the start but I think that dropped off a lot and I think when retailers are faced with various issues that’s not related to this program in particular but just generally in this time of the economy they can be quite disheartened to keep asking people if they want reusables if a lot of it is no.

So now I want to talk about some of the successes. So as I mentioned before in week 11 we conducted a survey. We did that online through the intranet and myself and Sam our auditor also did in person surveys for a whole week. So we surveyed and we received 560 respondents. 92% loved or liked the program, 85% supported the program continuing and 256 people were engaged who didn’t previously know about the program. So even in conducting the survey itself it was such a good way for us to just engage with the public.

So we also had really good support from the LTU community. We had staff support on LinkedIn, we had support from top management. All our senior leadership team backed this program in starting and also continuing as well. We also had more retailers on board with us throughout the pilot. So when we initially applied for the fund we had three retailers on board for this program. Then when we launched we had five and now we have eight retailers. We do hope to onboard more retailers and also embed this into future leases with new retailers that will come to the Bundoora campus.

Another success we had was a potential reduced stock loss. So our cups don’t have lids and we did have initial complaints from both the retailer and also the customers. Because they didn’t have lids it was a bit tricky to walk it say 10/15 minutes to their office and if you have been to our Melbourne Bundoora campus you know the campus is really, really big. To walk from one side to the other might take you 20 minutes. And because we didn’t have lids we wanted people to use it in the Agora as for example a dining service and it really reduced the likelihood of stock loss.

So some of the operational costs and benefits. So SV funded about $70,000 to pay for the assets and infrastructure of the project. So this included the dishwasher, the dishwasher hub fit out, all the crockery, the trolleys, the signage, the cages for the trolleys to sit in, graphic services and an auditor as well. We then also did $18,000 in cash contribution, so project delivery and setup with our contracted partners, $13,000 in Cirka staff, so four hours a day Monday to Friday to help with the replenishment and cleaning of the crockery. $18,000 was then of our in-kind contribution, so my project management time, time for other staff members from comms, FAS, for their support. And we also created jobs. So Cirka staff, 0.5 FTE and the auditor was 0.6 FTE.

So this is a quick outline of the expenses, staff and volunteer allocation. So for the project manager, me, it was 0.1 FTE but some weeks you did really need a lot more hours such as during launch or when issues arise. It was a really timely thing to get them fixed. We also have a dedicated cleaner at 0.6 FTE which is four hours a day, and we also had an auditor and survey conductor Sam who’s finished that contract with us but he was on at 0.6 FTE. So Sam actually gave us a lot of really good qualitative and quantitative insights of the program.

So the future of the Reusable Revolution. So recently I presented the business case to our senior executive team about two weeks ago and we’ve got the approval for the program to continue business as usual. We’ve already purchased more stock and we’re continuing to engage to onboard with more tenancies who are in the Agora now and also who are keen to onboard in the Agora in the future. We will be including this as an option in future leases as well as ensuring that they comply with our leasing that they must supply compostable packaging and not use any single use plastics.

So some of the recommendations we have is that we do need more resources to make this program happen. We would prefer to have a design contractor to create better decals and messaging if we were to do it again. We would want engagement staff for the launch, so either students or staff just directly talking to every single person that comes through the Agora and goes into those tenancies, and more of an emphasis on the qualitative data.

So any questions?

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Xiao Yan. We will keep Q&A for the end if that’s okay.

Xiao Yan Li:

No worries.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you so much for sharing some fantastic insights. And congratulations on getting approval to continue for the next remainder of the year. It’s great work. Thanks. And the last presenter, not least, is Lulu Meehan-Welham, the Sustainability Project Development Coordinator from Monash University. So Lulu works with the net zero and sustainability team at Monash and in her current role Lulu supports Monash University’s sustainable goals and drives campus community engagement and education through ditch disposables initiative.

Monash University’s sustainability strategy is based on a circular economic framework which establishes how they utilise their campus’ operation and research capabilities to develop, test and showcase solutions for realising the United Nations sustainable development goals. Welcome Lulu.

Lulu Meehan-Welhem:

Thank you. I’ll just quickly share my screen.

Okay. Can you all see that?

[Visual of slide with text saying Monash University’, ‘Reusable Dining Program’, ‘Monash Ditch Disposables Initiative’, ‘Circular Economy Showcase’, ‘Reuse Pilots at Universities’, ‘20^th June 2023’, ‘Lulu Meehan-Welham’]

Brij Parmar:

Yep.

Lulu Meehan-Welham:

Brilliant. So thank you Brij and the team at Sustainability Victoria for inviting us to present at today’s showcase. It’s really great to have an opportunity to speak with all of you today. As Brij mentioned I am Lulu Meehan-Welham the Sustainability Development Project Coordinator with the net zero and sustainability team at Monash University. And today I’ll be taking you through our Reusable Dining Program which we implemented at our Clayton campus with the assistance of the grant that we received from Sustainability Victoria under the Circular Economy Reuse Pilots Fund.

I’d just like to take a moment to acknowledge the Boonwurrung and Woiwurrung people of the Kulin nations, the traditional custodians of the lands where I speak to you from today as well as the lands where Monash University’s Australian campuses are located. I also acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where each of you are learning and living and working from today and I pay my respects to the Elders of these lands both past and present and extend that respect to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples who may be present on the call with us today.

So I guess I’ll start off by discussing our project design. So with these points that you see here being our key deliverables for the pilot our aim was to implement a reusable dining program that was easy for retailers and diners to adopt and simple to run operationally on a day to day basis. So we have 35 different food retailers at Clayton campus so we wanted to narrow our focus on retailers who operated within our central campus centre and we also decided to target retailers who we knew were at the time serving 100% of their meals using disposable packaging but who were also within the vicinity of a dining or food court type area which would make dining an equally convenient option.

So prior to launching the pilot we identified several retailers who fit these criteria and approached them to see if they’d be willing to come on board as adopters of the program. And so when speaking to these retailers some of the benefits that we pointed out to joining the program were that there would be little to no operational impact to them. Our team would take care of the collection, washing and restocking of the reusables so they could just continue to serve their customers without any changes.

There would also be no need to explain the program to diners at point of sale because our team would provide the relevant information and promote the program. So I think this really appealed to them because it meant that their staff didn’t have to learn anything new, their customer service wouldn’t be affected and therefore there would be no impact on their sales. And lastly adopting reusables also meant that they could potentially make some savings so by no longer needing to purchase disposable packaging.

So in terms of reusables we decided to go with melamine plates and bowls mainly because they’re durable, stain and scratch resistant and lightweight and they’re less likely to break if we accidentally drop them. And we know this for a fact because my colleague and I actually threw some against the wall just to test it out. And they’re cost effective as well. So you’re looking at roughly between $1 to $5 per unit depending on the item when you buy in bulk. And we decided just to go with these plain white plates and bowls which look really similar to actual crockery.

We also use stainless steel cutlery. So in our case just knives, forks and spoons. However we would like to eventually include stainless steel chopsticks because we know that chopsticks are widely used by our diners on campus. And I think that stainless steel is a good option for reusables just in terms of cleaning and sanitising and they’re also cost effective, roughly 40 cents per unit.

We also purchased several trolleys just to help transport reusables to and from the scrape stations and the dishwashing hub.

And to service the reusable dining program we set up a central dishwashing hub in our campus centre. So this space has two pass through commercial dishwashers. We already owned these. We didn’t have to buy them. And there’s also ample storage space for our reusable stock. So leading up to the launch we had our dishwashers serviced to ensure that we were operating with the right temperature and also had the correct amount of rinse aid to effectively clean and dry melamine plates specifically.

So just in case anybody’s curious we found that 82 degrees Celsius for the rinse and 60 degrees Celsius for the wash is a good setting for melamine and stainless steel. And the cycles can range between three to eight minutes. So we tend to run the cutlery through an eight minute cycle just to ensure that everything is washed thoroughly. And the current washing capacity with these dishwashers is about 400 dishes per hour per machine which is more than enough to cover what we currently wash each day. But we do have plans to expand this as well. We’re lucky to have an old conveyor dishwasher that’s located in a room just next to this hub and it’s been out of use for about a decade so we’re currently in the process of getting parts to replace these old bits and once we’ve finished that recommission it should actually boost our dishwashing efficiency up to about three to four thousand dishes an hour.

And these are our scrape stations. So we’ve got several of these dotted around our campus centre located close to the participating retailers and they were custom built for this project. They’re just a basic design with space for bins underneath in the cupboards and also tubs on top for plates and cutlery to be collected. And they’re also on wheels. You can’t really see it in this picture but they’re also on wheels which means that they’re completely mobile and they can be relocated at any time. And that makes it useful for us if we need them for say campus events. We originally met with a commercial diner who typically does fit outs for food courts and public spaces but the quote came in at around $28,000 for three units so we decided against that and designed this one ourselves and commissioned a local builder to make five units for about $8,500 instead.

And so this is how our reusable dining program works. Our dishwashing service operates between 10:00am and 3:00pm Monday to Friday during semester. We don’t usually operate during the weekends or after hours because our participating retailers are closed. And we’ve found that this five hour window each day during semester is sufficient to cover operational requirements. And then during uni breaks and exams we reduce the operation to three hours a day so usually between 11:00am and 2:00pm.

So I guess it’s time for some results. So when we first launched in February we had three retailers who agreed to be part of the program early. We had Meeting Point, Peri Peri Chicken and Neptune’s Fish and Chips. And during those first four weeks we were still getting used to things. So we were trying to finesse the dishwashing operation while also working hard to promote the program. And we weren’t really pushing retailers to use reusables. We just kind of left them to operate business as usual.

So we were pretty happy with our initial results. We washed on average 113 plates a day, 565 plates a week. So in total we washed just over 6,500 reusable plates and cutlery in the first four weeks and that obviously directly reflected what we diverted from landfill.

But by week five I think word about the Reusable Dining Program began to spread amongst the retailers and soon a few more of them reached out to see if they could also join the program. And two of the interested retailers that we did allow to join the program were the Den and PappaRich and we decided to incorporate them into the program because they both met our criteria of serving 100% of their meals on disposables and were also located close to a dining or food court area. The Den in particular are really committed to reusables by the fact that they started using them as default and then also charging 20 cents for disposables and they said that their customers haven’t actually had any negative comments about that.

So with five retailers on board we really saw the use of reusables increase. And so now as of yesterday’s data we washed an average of 246 plates per day or 1,200 plates per week. But I think that these figures are a little misleading because the averages are actually usually higher during semester. I think we were around 400 plates a day. And that’s because weeks five to 16 included a couple of short weeks because of the public holidays so the program wasn’t in operation. We’ve also had SWOTVAC exams and semester breaks. So during that time there’s fewer people on campus and so fewer dishes are being washed so I think that’s driven our average down a little bit.

But I think in 16 weeks we’ve managed to go from three participating retailers to five and we’ve washed over 13,000 spoons, 13,000 forks, nearly 22,000 plates and almost 50,000 single use items have been saved from landfill in total. So needless to say we’re really, really thrilled with these results and we hope to further build on this when we sign more retailers onto the program.

So of course there’s been some challenges, the main ones being listed here. So things about behaviour, so disposables are convenient, BYO is not convenient. It’s pretty standard responses that we got from some of our surveys. Perceptions of cleanliness was an interesting one. We got some survey responses from diners who admitted that they were wary about the cleanliness of reusables and I think that that’s pretty understandable in the post-pandemic world that we now find ourselves in. But I know that our team are working really diligently to ensure that reusables are washed and sanitised thoroughly. So we’re just going to have to do a little bit of work around changing that perception.

I think that our most major challenge is really around the waste and recycling. So over the last few months we’ve observed a significant amount of contamination in our recycling bins and the results from a waste audit that we had conducted by Recycle Smart gave us a figure of over 70% contamination in our recycling bins. I would actually say that that’s probably even higher than that. And I think this really highlights just how much confusion there is out there over how to correctly dispose of takeaway packaging. And that’s not an issue that’s unique to us at Monash. I think it’s a pretty prolific issue everywhere. But I think our next steps will be to focus a lot more on targeted education and strategic comms to really help change behaviours and reduce the amount of wish cycling that we’re seeing occurring on campus.

But despite all that there’s been a lot of success in this pilot I think. We’ve had some amazing responses from our campus community. Feedback from both staff and students has been overwhelmingly positive. Our student survey results have shown that there’s a lot of willingness in the community to use reusables whether that’s a dine in or BYO. And people are receptive to learning more about sustainability best practice. So there’s a lot of opportunity there to engage and educate campus community and hopefully help drive positive behaviour change.

And I think an integral part of our success really comes down to our Ditch Disposables team. So when we first started planning our project we decided that we would hire a team of casual sustainability assistants to operate the daily dishwashing service. Now this team are all Monash students who are passionate about sustainability and they’ve done some amazing work over the last 16 or so weeks, and not only at successfully keeping the daily operation running but also in helping collect data, engaging with the campus community by running some fun educational activities and also conducting surveys and audits. So I really want to praise the work that these students have done. Washing dishes isn’t a glamorous job but I think that they’ve done a really, really good job and they’ve been a really hardworking, dedicated bunch. So if any of the team are actually on the call today please give yourselves a pat on the back. You’ve done incredibly well.

And so for anyone who’s keen to implement a similar type of reusable program at your campus or institution I think my main recommendations would be to work hard on constant engagement and comms. I think explaining it once at the start and then hoping people remember won’t work. Your messaging needs to be concise and consistent. And also be wary of relying on your retailers to promote your program and drive your messaging for you. The information should come directly from you just to avoid confusion and so that you can also drive the narrative. And I think if you get these right then it will go a long way in helping alleviate some of the pressures on your operational and logistical processes. So providing awareness, education and focusing on changing behaviours will help reduce incorrect actions which will then have negative flow on effects for the rest of your business process.

And that’s all from me. I hope that you found some of this information insightful and hopefully you implement a similar type of reusable program at your own institution. Thank you so much.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you so much Lulu for some fantastic insights. It’s great to learn some really interesting points. I think the waste disposal is always a tricky one especially when it comes to after the ban some of the acceptable items are quite expensive and often branded as compostable and ends up in whichever bin. So we are really, really hoping that as a part of this reuse it’s also minimising the contamination in other waste streams such as organics and things.

If anybody has questions you are very welcome to unmute yourself and ask questions. If not I have a few questions. So I’m seeing a hand up. So Usha.

Audience Member:

Yeah thanks very much. And agree that the presentations have been really good. I just wondered in terms of the universities that presented whether you’ve done an LCA or something similar in terms of comparisons between for instance water that was used for the dishwashing, the electricity and sort of the setup initiative that needed to go with all the initiatives. So any thoughts around that? Thanks.

Brij Parmar:

Open to any or all three of you if you have done it. Yes. Hi Chad.

Audience Member:

Yeah. Hi. This is Chad from Huskee. We did a pilot at Swinburne as well and with regards to your question with water usage we do have an LCA report that was given by Edge Environment which we’ve looked at the comparison between water usage of a single use cup versus a reusable and I can provide that to you. So the common assumption is there is much more water used but if you’re looking at the whole lifecycle of a cup its cost of goods analysis is about three cents. So it’s much less than what you think it is. And like I said I’m happy to provide that to anyone.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Chad. And there is a paper which we will try to find very, very quickly but I think it’s from the University of Portsmouth that actually looks into this LCA. And there are some really, really encouraging signs. And it was really heartwarming to see personally that a lot of findings or rather the recommendation in that paper – these reuse pilots are quite consistent with those approaches and methods. So I will share that paper with you if I can find it very quickly. Hi James. Go for it.

Audience Member:

Can you hear me?

Yeah. Look. G’day. Thanks for all your presentations. They were very interesting for someone who’s new to the waste industry myself. I got a sense that there was an undertone of sort of the education piece, that it would have underpinned much of the success of each of your projects. What was your recommended – in hindsight now what is your recommended lead time towards these projects for the general public if you had your time over?

Brij Parmar:

I’ll pose this question to Deakin and Monash if that’s okay starting with Deakin. Because I think you guys are situated in geographically different locations. So starting with Deakin, go for it.

Ryan Pane:

Thanks Brij and thanks for the question James. I think for us because we decided to go the 100% reusable option I think we would have in hindsight needed a much larger lead time. I don’t know specifically what that number would be but I would have thought in the order of probably four to six weeks as a minimum lead in to give people time to adapt to what’s coming and maybe even a slower transition into it. I think if we had have maybe gone with a different split where we were only partly reusable it might have come off better because people still had all those other options that they were familiar with. When we decided to take all of those away – and we did give notice but it was a bit more of a kind of it’s here and now it’s not – so in hindsight it probably would have been a good one to two month lead in where we can really start to educate people and say this is coming. Please be prepared. Here are all your options available to you. Here’s why we’re trying to achieve this. So I think that would be my approach at this stage or even just using our trimester system as an approach as well and saying okay let’s do all the education piece in trimester one and let people know that from trimester two we’re going to this period. So I think the answer there in some ways is the more the better.

Lulu Meehan-Welham:

And I think for me if I could do it all over again – Monash managed to secure the grant back in September last year and that was before I actually started with the net zero and sustainability team. So there was about three months of time which I think if I had have had that time I would have done a lot more in terms of engagement and education and really kind of doing something similar to what La Trobe did in really having a strategic comms and engagement plan. I think three months lead time to do everything that La Trobe did is really probably what I would have done. Yeah.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you everyone. And it’s great to see that some of you are actually going to expand this project a bit further as well. Lulu and Xiao Yan – starting with Lulu because you just finished one – how are you going to expand? Because what came out really loud in our last masterclass that we discussed is it’s very scalable. You can easily scale that up.

Lulu Meehan-Welham:

So we’re planning to run at least until the end of November this pilot. As I said we focused on the retailers that were in our campus centre at Clayton but we’ve got 35 retailers at Clayton campus. We’ve also got our Caulfield and Peninsula campuses that also have retailers there. So I think that what we really want to do over the next six months is really work out how we can scale it out to the rest of the campuses and also start looking at potential takeaway options as well. Because we did have a borrow cup system for our coffee prior to COVID and we had to stop that. So I think that if we incorporated borrow cup and also scale out and maybe introduce some sort of takeaway option as well. I know that Returnr has worked for us in the past. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Returnr but something similar. Yeah. I think that that’s what we would like to do.

Brij Parmar:

And Xiao Yan?

Xiao Yan Li:

Hi. Thanks Brij. For us we are going to expand the program, so continue business as usual just for the foreseeable future. Our university is currently in the process of drafting a university city of the future and one of the goals I know would be zero waste. And it’s just something that the senior leadership team knows that it’s an expense to the university, it’s something that we don’t make money from at all. And that’s a really difficult business case study when you’re trying to do the right thing in sustainability and sell that. But they know that this is just a small step in terms of larger things that we’ll implement to implement zero waste. As I mentioned in my presentation we are trying to embed this into leases for future tenancies coming on board with us and a potential to have this program in our Bendigo campus which is our second largest campus in the future as well.

Brij Parmar:

Good. Thanks. And I really hope that – I mean of course universities are going to expand in their own capacity but other organisations and the people who have joined us, hopefully there is enough learnings from this webinar that you can actually take away.

My name is Brij and I work on the single use plastics so if you’d like to connect with us please feel free. But I think we are at time so thank you all so much. Thank you Lulu, Xiao Yan, Linden and Ryan. It’s great to see you all. And thank you all the audience for such a positive engagement. We love doing these webinars and it’s great to see so much response. So thank you all so much. We will publish this on our website so just keep a lookout for an email. We will definitely let you know.

But for now it’s a wrap so thank you all so much and hope you all enjoy the rest of the day and stay warm.

Xiao Yan Li:

Thank you Brij.

[End of Transcript]

Transcript

Sustainability Victoria

Circular Economy Showcase

Reuse Pilots at Universities

Tuesday, 20 June 2023

Presented by:

moderator:

Brij Parmar

Project Advisor, Plastics, Sustainability Victoria

Panellists:

Ryan Pane
Manager, Sustainability Programs, Deakin University

Xiao Yan Li
Sustainability Coordinator, La Trobe University

Lulu Meehan-Welham
Sustainability Project Development Coordinator, Monash University

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Circular Economy Showcase – Reuse pilots at universities’, ‘We will be starting shortly…’, with image of two hands holding two white cups with text on the cups saying ‘The Reusable Revolution’]

[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]

Brij Parmar:

So good afternoon everyone. And it’s great to see some of you. Welcome back again. This is our third topic to discuss, the reuse pilots of circular economy. My name is Brij. I’m just going to mute everyone.

And I would like to commence today’s session with an acknowledgment of the country. So I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands upon which I’m based today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. I also pay my respect to the traditional custodians of the lands from which you’re joining us today. I acknowledge the deep connection to the earth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their invaluable contributions to our understanding of climate change and the environment.

So today I’ll provide a brief overview of our program and then our amazing presenters from the university sector are going to showcase their reuse pilots, reuse systems. So just the key updates from us. Last year we visited over 3,400 businesses to collect data to understand the consumption and some of the behaviours related to the single use plastics. We have outlined some of this in our previous masterclass. Highly recommended to go and see that if you’re interested. We have shared some success stories of some of the businesses, how they’re leading reuse systems in their small to medium food servicing businesses. We have lots of posters and communication available if you would like to implement a similar system in your settings and we are publishing more and more pilot case studies from the reuse pilots.

So if you remember last year we had a masterclass from the University of Melbourne. Thank you University of Melbourne especially Sue and Amelia who shared their outstanding program Choose to Reuse with us.

And we kicked off these 16 pilots because we’re really keen to understand the visibility of the reuse system in different settings over here. So SV provided over 620,000 [0:02:19] projects which many of them are very diverse, so from ice-cream shop to university to office building. So we are seeing some really, really interesting insights into this space. Our work – I’ll share the link but also if you just scan this code. Basically all of our work sits on that page which soon are going to be updated with a few more other additions into it. So I’m quite excited to share that work with you.

But that’s enough from us. I’ll introduce our first speaker. So our first speaker is from Deakin University, Linden Raybould and Ryan Pane. The Deakin University team supports the development and implementation of sustainable strategies and initiatives across seven key pillars. Deakin University has set significant targets demonstrating our commitment to reducing waste and embracing circular economic principles. So by 2025 further reduce waste to landfill purpose to ten kilograms and by 2030 to zero waste to landfill by applying waste avoidance and circular economy principles.

So Deakin is currently defining its voice in circular economy strategy and implementation roadmap to support the university’s commitments and driving the integration of circular economy principles into their operations. So welcome Ryan and Linden. So excited to have you. Please go ahead and share your screens and looking forward to it.

Ryan Pane:

Thanks very much Brij. I’ll just share screen here.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Deakin University’, ‘Circular Economy Showcase’, ‘Reuse Pilot’, ‘Deakin University’]

Hopefully everybody can see that now.

So thanks Brij and welcome everybody, and thanks for the opportunity to talk to you guys today about our reuse pilot program here at Deakin. So I guess going back to 2022 we learnt of the grant funding through Sustainability Victoria and obviously we were very lucky to receive part of that funding. And we decided to utilise that into a pilot program at our Waurn Ponds campus down here in Geelong. It was chosen that campus really because it’s one of our larger cohorts but also the fact that the three main food areas are centrally located and could be easily kind of incorporated into this test bed.

So the aim of the program really was to try and eliminate all single use plastics out of those food venues. So that really came off the back from this grant of the Victorian Government banning the single use plastics and we decided to take that even further and say well let’s reduce all disposable items out of our food venues so inclusive of takeaway cups and disposable food packaging which were being utilised in those hospitality venues. So we took that as a real opportunity to try and go to 100% reusable. And you can see there the three main hospitality venues that we had here or the ones that we targeted. We have Market Hall. That’s really a big kind of food court operation. It’s primarily hot food, larger items, and then some coffees, salads, cakes, that type of thing. And then we have Barista Bar and Mr Tod which are more smaller café style operators. So that’s higher volumes of coffee and then smaller food items. So they were the three that we were working towards.

So initially we worked on our stakeholder engagement. So that came about through working with our hospitality manager here at Deakin and then connecting in with the vendors, the staff and getting them on board, explaining the program, what we had in plan, what were trying to do with it, and learning from them around I guess the operational side of things and considerations that we had to put in. We also worked in with our fellow team members in the campus operations area particularly around working with our cleaning staff and getting that into operation and how is that going to help to collect all of these reusable items around the university and get them back to the vendors. And then we had to communicate out obviously to our customers, our student staff and visitors and we did that through a number of ways with internal communication, through staff and student channels. Myself and Linden spent a lot of time down there particularly over the first few weeks of the pilot and then also with our campaign signage which I will get to in a minute here.

So we worked with a local design company to come up with really this branding and signage. We wanted something that was really bold and engaging and tried to sell the message. And this is what they came up with for us and we ran with it. So it really centred around this idea of lending a hand to wipe out waste, getting us all on board together to make that difference. So another key message in this was around the little acts making a big impact and that was what we really tried to sell this messaging on. And then we had the three kind of more simplistic messages there of the grab it, the use it and the return it just to try and sell I guess the system for what we were trying to do with the reusables.

So we had multiple options there as you can see, the campaign signage which went out via emails and things like that. We had the digital signs there, the decals and stickers and then over time we created the pull up banners just to create more visual effect down in the café areas. And this signage also went around our collection stations as well.

There’s an example of a collection station there in the image.

So I guess the two big challenges for us that came out of this program as we started it was firstly there was a lack of perceived takeaway options. So as I mentioned earlier we decided to go quite bravely for 100% reusable items in our cafes and with that came about that people thought there was no takeaway option available to them. So we fielded quite a few concerns around that and it was about communicating that message that there was options available, they could take these items away, they just had to return them back to us. Or they could bring their own things like keep cups as well and use it that way.

And then probably the biggest challenge that we faced throughout this whole thing was maintaining the stock levels. So our hospitality manager decided to go for a really – he wanted that sort of more premium feel. He wanted to really encourage people to stay in and sit in and have a really nice experience dining in at our cafes. So he went for some pretty nice items. You can see some examples there of the Huskee cups and the bowls that were chosen. And we got good feedback on those and they were really nice items. The downside was that people didn’t return them so we started to lose our stock levels considerably and that impacted I guess the amount of reusable items that we could push out going forward.

So as part of all of this as well we pushed out a customer survey. So this was a digital survey that we created. So we had QR codes that people could scan and then we also went around the café venues and asked people to fill it in for us. And this was just a bit of a snapshot here. So we had 87 respondents there and you can see the breakdown of cohort. And then overwhelmingly we were getting some really positive feedback. So people were really supportive of the idea. They loved the fact that we were offering this out. They really liked the items and the fact that we were trying to make the impact on the single use items. But in saying that they still decided they didn’t want to return said items so that was a bit of a contrast for us there.

But that brings us to our successes. So in spite of those challenges we still made some really great progress and some significant impact here. So you can see that so far from the start of March through to the end of May we’ve removed more than 32,000 items from landfill which is shown there in the breakdown. Around 14,000 items in cutlery, 6,000 in coffee cups and nearly 12,000 there in the food packaging. So we were still able to have a really significant impact and this was just a fantastic result and probably in some ways exceeded what we were initially thinking, and was surprising given some of the challenges that we did face with the stock levels.

Also worth noting in here is that these numbers don’t include nearly 6,000 keep cup sales as well. So that could be factored in that happened which was really, really great and it’s been a real positive message that we’ve been able to put out to our community to say thank you and to show the impact that this does have by doing these types of programs.

This is a breakdown of how we used I guess our grant money. So I guess the most significant purchase there was that we put in a new big commercial dishwasher and drier into the Market Hall area and that serviced all of the dishwashing for those three cafes for all our cups, cutlery, crockery. Then we had the purchase of that crockery and cutlery and cups. The collection stations that you saw was the actual cabinetry as well as the stainless steel trolleys for collection. And then we had all our signage design, installation and costs as well. So that’s that one.

So I guess our recommendations going forward. One of the big things we learnt and would be important for others as well is when we’re promoting a new initiative like this particularly going 100% reusable is to get the information out there early to give people the time to really soak it in and understand it and learn from it and push it across multiple channels. So we felt like we were giving people time and we felt like we were getting out through the channels but we learnt over time that we still needed more of that. So get in early and get in lots would be my recommendation there.

We also would consider in the future having student ambassadors and that type of approach in the venues just to talk to customers, get the message around, teach people about what it is that we’re doing, why we’re doing it and the impact that it can have and how it all works. And myself and Linden did that a lot but it would have been nice to probably have more of that in the future.

Further recommendations. Some sort of branding probably on the cups. Because we went with the Huskees some people thought they were still throwaway options, some people thought that we were giving them away and they could just take them. So probably having some sort of branding there or maybe a less desirable option for people to try and eliminate some of that stock level loss would be helpful as well. And then consider going into at base swap programs or some type of an incentive whether that’s further discounts. We do give discounts for keep cups and things like that but whether they got more discount for reusable items, things of that nature, would be something worth considering as well.

And then our future state. At the moment our hospitality manager is going to take this and run with it a little bit. And so it’s how we integrate this into our other campuses to continue it and keep making the impact across a larger scale. And so the focus at the moment is really around the dine in option and how we get people using that. Because particularly with the food we can still make a real significant impact with our packages there and then how we integrate some options for the takeaway cups particularly. So whether it’s buying a lid and bringing your own lid back each time and having a reusable option that’s both dine in and takeaway, these are all things that are being explored.

And then integrating that further into our waste reduction strategies going forward and how we meet our commitments. You can see a picture there of our waste recovery wall. So that same signage has come through into all of those. So it’s selling that same type of message and expanding that out further.

So that’s it from me and that’s Deakin’s story. And be happy to answer questions later on but hopefully you got something from that. Thank you.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you. Thanks Ryan. And yeah love seeing all the actions or the things on the screen so great to see. And also since some of the people have joined here during the presentation, so just a quick highlight. Please feel free to put in a question in the chat. We have allocated some time at the end for Q&A. And this webinar will be recorded and published. So if you have to leave early or would like to share with others we have you covered.

So our next presenter is Xiao Yan from La Trobe University. Xiao Yan is a sustainability coordinator within the sustainability and masters planning team in the infrastructure and operations at La Trobe University. She’s also the project manager for the reuse pilot program, the Reusable Revolution. In her current role Xiao Yan supports the university’s sustainability goals through sustainability reporting such as climate active recertification of campuses and managing other initiatives to promote sustainable transport, waste management, sustainability volunteer program, etcetera. She is currently drafting the new waste management plan to get La Trobe one step closer to the zero waste. Welcome Xiao Yan.

Xiao Yan Li:

Thank you Brij. I’ll just share my screen now.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘La Trobe University’, ‘The Reusable Revolution’, ‘Xiao Yan Li’, Project Manager/Sustainability Coordinator’, with image of two hands holding two white cups with text on the cups saying ‘The Reusable Revolution’]

Okay. So first of all thank you Brij for having me and thank you SV for the opportunity for this partnership for the reuse pilot program. My name is Xiao Yan. I’m from La Trobe University and I’m the project manager for the reusable revolution, our reuse crockery pilot program, and I’m also the sustainability coordinator at La Trobe University.

So first I’d like to do an acknowledgment of country. So La Trobe University proudly acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land where all our campuses are located on. We recognise that Indigenous Australians have an ongoing connection to the land and the university values their unique contribution to both the university and wider Australian society. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people as the traditional owners of the Kulin nation where I’m located at today and I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

So first I’ll just show you a couple of videos. I am in the one on the right because the social team asked me to do it. So throughout the videos you will see our signage, our logo, our trolley and the dishwash hub and I’ll just start with the video on the left.

[START VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[Visual of a coffee shop using reusable cups and then the consumers returning the used cup and plate to the return station, two people seated at a table drinking from reusable cups]

[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

And now the next one.

[START VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[Text saying ‘When you choose re-usable cups and plates on campus’ with visual of a female taking her used reusable cup and plate and placing in a return bin]

[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

Okay. Great. So about the project. La Trobe University launched the reusable revolution, a reuse crockery program at its Melbourne Bundoora campus in February this year. So the project totally cost over $114,000 with Sustainability Victoria funding $70,000 of that and La Trobe University funding $43,000 both in cash and also in-kind. The pilot period was for 17 weeks from the 20^th of February on Monday to Friday the 16^th of June for a total of 17 weeks. So we now actually have a total of eight retailers on board, so retailers ranging from cafes with majority of sales being coffees and sandwiches to fried chicken places, Asian noodle, rice, fresh stir fry, takeaway places and also Indian food.

So with crockery types we started off with six crockery types, so two sized cups, two sized bowls and two sized plates and then we introduced cutlery, so spoons and forks in week 11. The delay in cutlery introduction is just due to our hesitancy with contamination as we have an on site green waste, organic waste processor.

So also about the program, the reusable crockery includes what I mentioned before and they’re free to use for customers. So when they are done they simply return the crockery to one of our five collection trolleys located at our Bundoora campus in the Agora which is our food court. So the retailers are supported by the provision of clean crockery and replenishment whenever they are required supported by the engagement of a dedicated Cirka who is our cleaning partner – Cirka staff – between 12:00 to 4:00pm Monday to Friday. There is also a dishwash hub centrally located through our food court that is dedicated to wash and the storage of the reusable crockery.

So how did the grant come about? So last year I attended a Choose to Reuse Masterclass hosted by SV and the University of Melbourne and from that then we were known about the application process and the funding opportunity. So then from that I had asked our executive team if we could apply for this fund and create a business case for it.

I wanted to highlight some of the outcomes of the pilot program. So in week 11 we conducted a survey with over 560 respondents and 92% said that they loved or liked the reusable revolution. We’ve also had a 325% uptake of reusables since week one which is pretty incredible. And we have washed over 10,000 single use items with 361 kilograms of waste diverted from landfill. As you saw before we had a few videos that were launched on the official La Trobe University Instagram and TikTok pages. So they have collectively received over 136,000 views which is pretty incredible.

So how did we bring the stakeholders together? Number one collaboration is key. Before we applied for the funding we needed to get approval from our executive leader. We needed to make a plan about the program. I needed to source the place that the dishwash hub was going to be located and ensure that it was located centrally to the Agora our food court. We also needed really good relationships with Cirka and FAS once we received the funding. This is because Cirka our cleaning partner is essential because they are the ones who are replenishing the dishes and washing the dishes and it’s really important that they have a really transparent and good relationship with the retailers. FAS as well which is our Facilities Asset Services management team who directly work with Cirka and also the retailers.

Now for the engagement strategy. So we had various mediums of engagement, in person, surveys, giveaways and articles. So I’ll just run through what we’ve done before, during and ongoing. So before we launched the program we released a few articles on our intranet and student comms website then we also had a website launch on our sustainability website for La Trobe and we had a pre-launch survey and giveaway. We used Frank Green water bottles as giveaways because we knew people would love them and they are very, very popular.

So at the launch of the Reusable Revolution we did giveaways during O week at our sustainability stand. We gave away over 300 sets of reusable cutlery to students and staff as well as over $2,000 worth of food and drink vouchers served only on reusable crockery as part of our giveaways. We had high engagement with sustainability contacts such as our Facebook page and our email mailing list.

Some of our ongoing engagement strategies included embedding this program into our existing sustainability events such as Bikers Brekkie where every month we give out free breakfast and coffee vouchers for those who ride their bikes to the university. So as soon as the program began we ensured that all of our free breakfasts and coffees were only served on reusables. In week 11 we did a survey and a giveaway and I’ll talk about that a little bit later. We have also a group of volunteers who are the sustainability leaders who are all students and they went out in some of the earlier weeks just to talk with the general public about the program and then they engaged with over 85 groups of people within a two week slot. We also conducted multiple social media campaigns with giveaways embedded in those videos and they were extremely popular, and we also post monthly articles with key statistics.

So some of the challenges and learnings of the program. So setting up the program we had our crockery delayed due to COVID-19, the pandemic in China. So we sourced our crockery from China because we wanted to have our branding and also customised in sizing as well. And we wanted to do a soft launch. So our official launch date was orientation week but we actually wanted to do a soft launch two weeks before. Unfortunately just due to the delay we had to really, really push for the crockery to come in time. They did but we weren’t able to do the soft launch like we wanted to and we just started with the hard launch during O week.

The cost of the cleaners was also a big challenge and also learning, thinking about how we manage that cost ongoing now that the project continues business as usual. During the pilot we also had some other issues such as dishwasher issues. As I was the project manager I ordered detergent for the dishwasher and I definitely didn’t realise that you needed machine detergent, not handwashing detergent. So there was a lot of foaming in the dishwasher that wasn’t meant to be there. We solved this by having a dishwasher contractor.

Some of the learnings we had was staff’s belief in the value of the program was really, really important in the success. So staff members who loved the program or staff members who already brought their own coffee cups for example, they were able to create a really big influence within their direct teams and their team members in uptaking of the program. We also did an order of missing and damaged stock about midway through towards the end. We had about 20% of the small cups missing with the remaining amount not at a significant level of crockery missing. But we still had about 20% of cups unopened, 30% of bowls and 20% of plates still unopened. And towards the end of our pilot we actually purchased 700 of each size of the cups to refill stock which is a 63% restock.

So for the uptake of the program some of the challenges we experienced is that communication through customers, staff, students and visitors was really difficult. We had signage everywhere. All our trolleys had signage as well, as well as our dishwash hub which you saw in the video was a big room painted all green on the outside with really, really big decal. Even though we tried all those engagement strategies I think our reach was still limited in this day and age where staff is inundated with information and emails, and so are students. Students are faced with information overload all the time from the university.

Another challenge we found was retailers offering reusables. Our retailers did offer reusables significantly at the start but I think that dropped off a lot and I think when retailers are faced with various issues that’s not related to this program in particular but just generally in this time of the economy they can be quite disheartened to keep asking people if they want reusables if a lot of it is no.

So now I want to talk about some of the successes. So as I mentioned before in week 11 we conducted a survey. We did that online through the intranet and myself and Sam our auditor also did in person surveys for a whole week. So we surveyed and we received 560 respondents. 92% loved or liked the program, 85% supported the program continuing and 256 people were engaged who didn’t previously know about the program. So even in conducting the survey itself it was such a good way for us to just engage with the public.

So we also had really good support from the LTU community. We had staff support on LinkedIn, we had support from top management. All our senior leadership team backed this program in starting and also continuing as well. We also had more retailers on board with us throughout the pilot. So when we initially applied for the fund we had three retailers on board for this program. Then when we launched we had five and now we have eight retailers. We do hope to onboard more retailers and also embed this into future leases with new retailers that will come to the Bundoora campus.

Another success we had was a potential reduced stock loss. So our cups don’t have lids and we did have initial complaints from both the retailer and also the customers. Because they didn’t have lids it was a bit tricky to walk it say 10/15 minutes to their office and if you have been to our Melbourne Bundoora campus you know the campus is really, really big. To walk from one side to the other might take you 20 minutes. And because we didn’t have lids we wanted people to use it in the Agora as for example a dining service and it really reduced the likelihood of stock loss.

So some of the operational costs and benefits. So SV funded about $70,000 to pay for the assets and infrastructure of the project. So this included the dishwasher, the dishwasher hub fit out, all the crockery, the trolleys, the signage, the cages for the trolleys to sit in, graphic services and an auditor as well. We then also did $18,000 in cash contribution, so project delivery and setup with our contracted partners, $13,000 in Cirka staff, so four hours a day Monday to Friday to help with the replenishment and cleaning of the crockery. $18,000 was then of our in-kind contribution, so my project management time, time for other staff members from comms, FAS, for their support. And we also created jobs. So Cirka staff, 0.5 FTE and the auditor was 0.6 FTE.

So this is a quick outline of the expenses, staff and volunteer allocation. So for the project manager, me, it was 0.1 FTE but some weeks you did really need a lot more hours such as during launch or when issues arise. It was a really timely thing to get them fixed. We also have a dedicated cleaner at 0.6 FTE which is four hours a day, and we also had an auditor and survey conductor Sam who’s finished that contract with us but he was on at 0.6 FTE. So Sam actually gave us a lot of really good qualitative and quantitative insights of the program.

So the future of the Reusable Revolution. So recently I presented the business case to our senior executive team about two weeks ago and we’ve got the approval for the program to continue business as usual. We’ve already purchased more stock and we’re continuing to engage to onboard with more tenancies who are in the Agora now and also who are keen to onboard in the Agora in the future. We will be including this as an option in future leases as well as ensuring that they comply with our leasing that they must supply compostable packaging and not use any single use plastics.

So some of the recommendations we have is that we do need more resources to make this program happen. We would prefer to have a design contractor to create better decals and messaging if we were to do it again. We would want engagement staff for the launch, so either students or staff just directly talking to every single person that comes through the Agora and goes into those tenancies, and more of an emphasis on the qualitative data.

So any questions?

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Xiao Yan. We will keep Q&A for the end if that’s okay.

Xiao Yan Li:

No worries.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you so much for sharing some fantastic insights. And congratulations on getting approval to continue for the next remainder of the year. It’s great work. Thanks. And the last presenter, not least, is Lulu Meehan-Welham, the Sustainability Project Development Coordinator from Monash University. So Lulu works with the net zero and sustainability team at Monash and in her current role Lulu supports Monash University’s sustainable goals and drives campus community engagement and education through ditch disposables initiative.

Monash University’s sustainability strategy is based on a circular economic framework which establishes how they utilise their campus’ operation and research capabilities to develop, test and showcase solutions for realising the United Nations sustainable development goals. Welcome Lulu.

Lulu Meehan-Welhem:

Thank you. I’ll just quickly share my screen.

Okay. Can you all see that?

[Visual of slide with text saying Monash University’, ‘Reusable Dining Program’, ‘Monash Ditch Disposables Initiative’, ‘Circular Economy Showcase’, ‘Reuse Pilots at Universities’, ‘20^th June 2023’, ‘Lulu Meehan-Welham’]

Brij Parmar:

Yep.

Lulu Meehan-Welham:

Brilliant. So thank you Brij and the team at Sustainability Victoria for inviting us to present at today’s showcase. It’s really great to have an opportunity to speak with all of you today. As Brij mentioned I am Lulu Meehan-Welham the Sustainability Development Project Coordinator with the net zero and sustainability team at Monash University. And today I’ll be taking you through our Reusable Dining Program which we implemented at our Clayton campus with the assistance of the grant that we received from Sustainability Victoria under the Circular Economy Reuse Pilots Fund.

I’d just like to take a moment to acknowledge the Boonwurrung and Woiwurrung people of the Kulin nations, the traditional custodians of the lands where I speak to you from today as well as the lands where Monash University’s Australian campuses are located. I also acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where each of you are learning and living and working from today and I pay my respects to the Elders of these lands both past and present and extend that respect to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples who may be present on the call with us today.

So I guess I’ll start off by discussing our project design. So with these points that you see here being our key deliverables for the pilot our aim was to implement a reusable dining program that was easy for retailers and diners to adopt and simple to run operationally on a day to day basis. So we have 35 different food retailers at Clayton campus so we wanted to narrow our focus on retailers who operated within our central campus centre and we also decided to target retailers who we knew were at the time serving 100% of their meals using disposable packaging but who were also within the vicinity of a dining or food court type area which would make dining an equally convenient option.

So prior to launching the pilot we identified several retailers who fit these criteria and approached them to see if they’d be willing to come on board as adopters of the program. And so when speaking to these retailers some of the benefits that we pointed out to joining the program were that there would be little to no operational impact to them. Our team would take care of the collection, washing and restocking of the reusables so they could just continue to serve their customers without any changes.

There would also be no need to explain the program to diners at point of sale because our team would provide the relevant information and promote the program. So I think this really appealed to them because it meant that their staff didn’t have to learn anything new, their customer service wouldn’t be affected and therefore there would be no impact on their sales. And lastly adopting reusables also meant that they could potentially make some savings so by no longer needing to purchase disposable packaging.

So in terms of reusables we decided to go with melamine plates and bowls mainly because they’re durable, stain and scratch resistant and lightweight and they’re less likely to break if we accidentally drop them. And we know this for a fact because my colleague and I actually threw some against the wall just to test it out. And they’re cost effective as well. So you’re looking at roughly between $1 to $5 per unit depending on the item when you buy in bulk. And we decided just to go with these plain white plates and bowls which look really similar to actual crockery.

We also use stainless steel cutlery. So in our case just knives, forks and spoons. However we would like to eventually include stainless steel chopsticks because we know that chopsticks are widely used by our diners on campus. And I think that stainless steel is a good option for reusables just in terms of cleaning and sanitising and they’re also cost effective, roughly 40 cents per unit.

We also purchased several trolleys just to help transport reusables to and from the scrape stations and the dishwashing hub.

And to service the reusable dining program we set up a central dishwashing hub in our campus centre. So this space has two pass through commercial dishwashers. We already owned these. We didn’t have to buy them. And there’s also ample storage space for our reusable stock. So leading up to the launch we had our dishwashers serviced to ensure that we were operating with the right temperature and also had the correct amount of rinse aid to effectively clean and dry melamine plates specifically.

So just in case anybody’s curious we found that 82 degrees Celsius for the rinse and 60 degrees Celsius for the wash is a good setting for melamine and stainless steel. And the cycles can range between three to eight minutes. So we tend to run the cutlery through an eight minute cycle just to ensure that everything is washed thoroughly. And the current washing capacity with these dishwashers is about 400 dishes per hour per machine which is more than enough to cover what we currently wash each day. But we do have plans to expand this as well. We’re lucky to have an old conveyor dishwasher that’s located in a room just next to this hub and it’s been out of use for about a decade so we’re currently in the process of getting parts to replace these old bits and once we’ve finished that recommission it should actually boost our dishwashing efficiency up to about three to four thousand dishes an hour.

And these are our scrape stations. So we’ve got several of these dotted around our campus centre located close to the participating retailers and they were custom built for this project. They’re just a basic design with space for bins underneath in the cupboards and also tubs on top for plates and cutlery to be collected. And they’re also on wheels. You can’t really see it in this picture but they’re also on wheels which means that they’re completely mobile and they can be relocated at any time. And that makes it useful for us if we need them for say campus events. We originally met with a commercial diner who typically does fit outs for food courts and public spaces but the quote came in at around $28,000 for three units so we decided against that and designed this one ourselves and commissioned a local builder to make five units for about $8,500 instead.

And so this is how our reusable dining program works. Our dishwashing service operates between 10:00am and 3:00pm Monday to Friday during semester. We don’t usually operate during the weekends or after hours because our participating retailers are closed. And we’ve found that this five hour window each day during semester is sufficient to cover operational requirements. And then during uni breaks and exams we reduce the operation to three hours a day so usually between 11:00am and 2:00pm.

So I guess it’s time for some results. So when we first launched in February we had three retailers who agreed to be part of the program early. We had Meeting Point, Peri Peri Chicken and Neptune’s Fish and Chips. And during those first four weeks we were still getting used to things. So we were trying to finesse the dishwashing operation while also working hard to promote the program. And we weren’t really pushing retailers to use reusables. We just kind of left them to operate business as usual.

So we were pretty happy with our initial results. We washed on average 113 plates a day, 565 plates a week. So in total we washed just over 6,500 reusable plates and cutlery in the first four weeks and that obviously directly reflected what we diverted from landfill.

But by week five I think word about the Reusable Dining Program began to spread amongst the retailers and soon a few more of them reached out to see if they could also join the program. And two of the interested retailers that we did allow to join the program were the Den and PappaRich and we decided to incorporate them into the program because they both met our criteria of serving 100% of their meals on disposables and were also located close to a dining or food court area. The Den in particular are really committed to reusables by the fact that they started using them as default and then also charging 20 cents for disposables and they said that their customers haven’t actually had any negative comments about that.

So with five retailers on board we really saw the use of reusables increase. And so now as of yesterday’s data we washed an average of 246 plates per day or 1,200 plates per week. But I think that these figures are a little misleading because the averages are actually usually higher during semester. I think we were around 400 plates a day. And that’s because weeks five to 16 included a couple of short weeks because of the public holidays so the program wasn’t in operation. We’ve also had SWOTVAC exams and semester breaks. So during that time there’s fewer people on campus and so fewer dishes are being washed so I think that’s driven our average down a little bit.

But I think in 16 weeks we’ve managed to go from three participating retailers to five and we’ve washed over 13,000 spoons, 13,000 forks, nearly 22,000 plates and almost 50,000 single use items have been saved from landfill in total. So needless to say we’re really, really thrilled with these results and we hope to further build on this when we sign more retailers onto the program.

So of course there’s been some challenges, the main ones being listed here. So things about behaviour, so disposables are convenient, BYO is not convenient. It’s pretty standard responses that we got from some of our surveys. Perceptions of cleanliness was an interesting one. We got some survey responses from diners who admitted that they were wary about the cleanliness of reusables and I think that that’s pretty understandable in the post-pandemic world that we now find ourselves in. But I know that our team are working really diligently to ensure that reusables are washed and sanitised thoroughly. So we’re just going to have to do a little bit of work around changing that perception.

I think that our most major challenge is really around the waste and recycling. So over the last few months we’ve observed a significant amount of contamination in our recycling bins and the results from a waste audit that we had conducted by Recycle Smart gave us a figure of over 70% contamination in our recycling bins. I would actually say that that’s probably even higher than that. And I think this really highlights just how much confusion there is out there over how to correctly dispose of takeaway packaging. And that’s not an issue that’s unique to us at Monash. I think it’s a pretty prolific issue everywhere. But I think our next steps will be to focus a lot more on targeted education and strategic comms to really help change behaviours and reduce the amount of wish cycling that we’re seeing occurring on campus.

But despite all that there’s been a lot of success in this pilot I think. We’ve had some amazing responses from our campus community. Feedback from both staff and students has been overwhelmingly positive. Our student survey results have shown that there’s a lot of willingness in the community to use reusables whether that’s a dine in or BYO. And people are receptive to learning more about sustainability best practice. So there’s a lot of opportunity there to engage and educate campus community and hopefully help drive positive behaviour change.

And I think an integral part of our success really comes down to our Ditch Disposables team. So when we first started planning our project we decided that we would hire a team of casual sustainability assistants to operate the daily dishwashing service. Now this team are all Monash students who are passionate about sustainability and they’ve done some amazing work over the last 16 or so weeks, and not only at successfully keeping the daily operation running but also in helping collect data, engaging with the campus community by running some fun educational activities and also conducting surveys and audits. So I really want to praise the work that these students have done. Washing dishes isn’t a glamorous job but I think that they’ve done a really, really good job and they’ve been a really hardworking, dedicated bunch. So if any of the team are actually on the call today please give yourselves a pat on the back. You’ve done incredibly well.

And so for anyone who’s keen to implement a similar type of reusable program at your campus or institution I think my main recommendations would be to work hard on constant engagement and comms. I think explaining it once at the start and then hoping people remember won’t work. Your messaging needs to be concise and consistent. And also be wary of relying on your retailers to promote your program and drive your messaging for you. The information should come directly from you just to avoid confusion and so that you can also drive the narrative. And I think if you get these right then it will go a long way in helping alleviate some of the pressures on your operational and logistical processes. So providing awareness, education and focusing on changing behaviours will help reduce incorrect actions which will then have negative flow on effects for the rest of your business process.

And that’s all from me. I hope that you found some of this information insightful and hopefully you implement a similar type of reusable program at your own institution. Thank you so much.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you so much Lulu for some fantastic insights. It’s great to learn some really interesting points. I think the waste disposal is always a tricky one especially when it comes to after the ban some of the acceptable items are quite expensive and often branded as compostable and ends up in whichever bin. So we are really, really hoping that as a part of this reuse it’s also minimising the contamination in other waste streams such as organics and things.

If anybody has questions you are very welcome to unmute yourself and ask questions. If not I have a few questions. So I’m seeing a hand up. So Usha.

Audience Member:

Yeah thanks very much. And agree that the presentations have been really good. I just wondered in terms of the universities that presented whether you’ve done an LCA or something similar in terms of comparisons between for instance water that was used for the dishwashing, the electricity and sort of the setup initiative that needed to go with all the initiatives. So any thoughts around that? Thanks.

Brij Parmar:

Open to any or all three of you if you have done it. Yes. Hi Chad.

Audience Member:

Yeah. Hi. This is Chad from Huskee. We did a pilot at Swinburne as well and with regards to your question with water usage we do have an LCA report that was given by Edge Environment which we’ve looked at the comparison between water usage of a single use cup versus a reusable and I can provide that to you. So the common assumption is there is much more water used but if you’re looking at the whole lifecycle of a cup its cost of goods analysis is about three cents. So it’s much less than what you think it is. And like I said I’m happy to provide that to anyone.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Chad. And there is a paper which we will try to find very, very quickly but I think it’s from the University of Portsmouth that actually looks into this LCA. And there are some really, really encouraging signs. And it was really heartwarming to see personally that a lot of findings or rather the recommendation in that paper – these reuse pilots are quite consistent with those approaches and methods. So I will share that paper with you if I can find it very quickly. Hi James. Go for it.

Audience Member:

Can you hear me?

Yeah. Look. G’day. Thanks for all your presentations. They were very interesting for someone who’s new to the waste industry myself. I got a sense that there was an undertone of sort of the education piece, that it would have underpinned much of the success of each of your projects. What was your recommended – in hindsight now what is your recommended lead time towards these projects for the general public if you had your time over?

Brij Parmar:

I’ll pose this question to Deakin and Monash if that’s okay starting with Deakin. Because I think you guys are situated in geographically different locations. So starting with Deakin, go for it.

Ryan Pane:

Thanks Brij and thanks for the question James. I think for us because we decided to go the 100% reusable option I think we would have in hindsight needed a much larger lead time. I don’t know specifically what that number would be but I would have thought in the order of probably four to six weeks as a minimum lead in to give people time to adapt to what’s coming and maybe even a slower transition into it. I think if we had have maybe gone with a different split where we were only partly reusable it might have come off better because people still had all those other options that they were familiar with. When we decided to take all of those away – and we did give notice but it was a bit more of a kind of it’s here and now it’s not – so in hindsight it probably would have been a good one to two month lead in where we can really start to educate people and say this is coming. Please be prepared. Here are all your options available to you. Here’s why we’re trying to achieve this. So I think that would be my approach at this stage or even just using our trimester system as an approach as well and saying okay let’s do all the education piece in trimester one and let people know that from trimester two we’re going to this period. So I think the answer there in some ways is the more the better.

Lulu Meehan-Welham:

And I think for me if I could do it all over again – Monash managed to secure the grant back in September last year and that was before I actually started with the net zero and sustainability team. So there was about three months of time which I think if I had have had that time I would have done a lot more in terms of engagement and education and really kind of doing something similar to what La Trobe did in really having a strategic comms and engagement plan. I think three months lead time to do everything that La Trobe did is really probably what I would have done. Yeah.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you everyone. And it’s great to see that some of you are actually going to expand this project a bit further as well. Lulu and Xiao Yan – starting with Lulu because you just finished one – how are you going to expand? Because what came out really loud in our last masterclass that we discussed is it’s very scalable. You can easily scale that up.

Lulu Meehan-Welham:

So we’re planning to run at least until the end of November this pilot. As I said we focused on the retailers that were in our campus centre at Clayton but we’ve got 35 retailers at Clayton campus. We’ve also got our Caulfield and Peninsula campuses that also have retailers there. So I think that what we really want to do over the next six months is really work out how we can scale it out to the rest of the campuses and also start looking at potential takeaway options as well. Because we did have a borrow cup system for our coffee prior to COVID and we had to stop that. So I think that if we incorporated borrow cup and also scale out and maybe introduce some sort of takeaway option as well. I know that Returnr has worked for us in the past. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Returnr but something similar. Yeah. I think that that’s what we would like to do.

Brij Parmar:

And Xiao Yan?

Xiao Yan Li:

Hi. Thanks Brij. For us we are going to expand the program, so continue business as usual just for the foreseeable future. Our university is currently in the process of drafting a university city of the future and one of the goals I know would be zero waste. And it’s just something that the senior leadership team knows that it’s an expense to the university, it’s something that we don’t make money from at all. And that’s a really difficult business case study when you’re trying to do the right thing in sustainability and sell that. But they know that this is just a small step in terms of larger things that we’ll implement to implement zero waste. As I mentioned in my presentation we are trying to embed this into leases for future tenancies coming on board with us and a potential to have this program in our Bendigo campus which is our second largest campus in the future as well.

Brij Parmar:

Good. Thanks. And I really hope that – I mean of course universities are going to expand in their own capacity but other organisations and the people who have joined us, hopefully there is enough learnings from this webinar that you can actually take away.

My name is Brij and I work on the single use plastics so if you’d like to connect with us please feel free. But I think we are at time so thank you all so much. Thank you Lulu, Xiao Yan, Linden and Ryan. It’s great to see you all. And thank you all the audience for such a positive engagement. We love doing these webinars and it’s great to see so much response. So thank you all so much. We will publish this on our website so just keep a lookout for an email. We will definitely let you know.

But for now it’s a wrap so thank you all so much and hope you all enjoy the rest of the day and stay warm.

Xiao Yan Li:

Thank you Brij.

[End of Transcript]

Visual Summary

This video shows a PowerPoint Presentation, with speakers appearing via video to the side of the screen.

Speakers are:

Jean Young, Team Leader Plastics, Sustainability Victoria

Sue Hopkins, Sustainability Manager, The University of Melbourne

Emilia Bisogni, Sustainability Officer, The University of Melbourne

Text:

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Welcome to the Choose to Reuse Masterclass, we will be starting shortly, ‘Sustainability Victoria’]

[The visuals during this webinar are of a PowerPoint Presentation being played on screen, with speakers appearing via video to the side of the screen]

Jean Young:

Hello and welcome everyone online to the choose to reuse masterclass. We are really pleased to have you here. My name is Jean Young, and I am from sustainability Victoria, and I am the team leader of our plastics program which supports businesses impacted by the single use plastic phase outs.

I would like to commence today's session with an acknowledgement of country. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the many lands upon which we are meeting today and pay my respects to the elders past present and emerging. Today I am located on the lands of the Kulin Nation, and I acknowledge that we live and work on the lands of the world's oldest and most sustainable culture. I acknowledge the deep connection to earth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their invaluable contributions to our understanding of climate change and the environment.

Today I will provide a brief overview of the single use plastic policy, SV's business engagement activities and then we will hear from the University of Melbourne on how they are leading the reuse revolution. There will be an opportunity for questions following their presentation and I will provide some details on a reuse pilot program that we have under development.

Many of you will be aware of the problem of single use plastics. They make up about 1/3 of the volume of Victoria's litter and cause harm to our environment. Many single use plastic items are used for a very short time and represent a poor use of our resources. They are difficult and economically unviable to recycle. They can often end up in our recycling systems leading to contamination. In February 2021, the Victorian government committed to banning single use plastic straws, plates, cutlery, drink stirrers, expanded polystyrene food and drink containers and cotton bud sticks from the 1st of February 2023. This is a deliverable of the circular economy policy recycling Victoria.

It is proposed that the ban will apply to conventional oxo-degradable and certified compostable plastic items. The Victorian Government now wants to hear from you, so you can now have your say on the draft regulations to enact the ban and the regulatory impact statement that outlines the approach to banning the single use plastic items. There is a frequently asked questions document included on the Engaged Vic website where there is more information on the draft regulations and the regulatory impact statement. You are encouraged to provide feedback via a survey on the Engaged Vic website. Or via a written submission and feedback is open until Sunday the 15th of May 2022.

Sustainability Victoria's role in delivering and supporting the delivery of the ban is to engage small to medium businesses who currently use single use plastics or SUPs to provide a service to their customers. This is predominantly those in the hospitality and food service industries. And our engagement will focus on providing information to support businesses to look at waste avoidance and reuse solutions as well as support DELWP, the Department of Environment Land, Water Planning and communicating the SUP policy once it is finalized later this year. The program will also host master classes targeted different sectors such as today, fund reuse pilots and undertake localized direct engagement including door to door doorknocking. Today is an opportunity to kick start the conversation around reuse models and what these might look like. From today, we hope you will consider how your organization or business might implement a reusable system to reduce single use plastics or single use items in preparation for the ban. When looking at the circular economy, we want food serving businesses to think about where they sit in the circular economy and how they can drive reuse over single use.

But today's session is really all about learning from the University of Melbourne. We have time allocated for questions and answers after the presentation. I am very pleased to introduce Sue Hopkins. Sue is a sustainability professional across tertiary education, government and not for profit organisations across the UK and Australia with an educational background in environmental science, ecology and conservation. Sue joined the University of Melbourne in 2016. In her current role as Sustainability manager, she is responsible for addressing the operational targets of the university's sustainability plan as well as community engagement. Sue sits on the Board of Directors at Australasian campuses towards Sustainability (ACTS), which is a registered not for profit organisation as of 2021.Thank you, Sue!

Sue Hopkins:

Thank you so much, Jean. That was a really kind introduction and welcome to everybody on the line today. My name is Sue Hopkins. As Jean said, I am the Sustainability manager at the University of Melbourne, and I'm absolutely delighted to be here.

Thank you so much to Jean and the team and to Sustainability Victoria for reaching out to us and partner with us today to hopefully share our story with you and inspire you to do some great things in the reuse space. A couple of things. I have also got two of my colleagues on the line. Unfortunately, due to the way that the system setup, you probably cannot see them, but I have got Emilia Bisogni and Ravina Grace who also sit in the Melbourne University team. I could not do, we couldn't do what we do here at Melbourne without them. This is a team effort on all our parts. We are very much working towards a circular economy approach in the way that we deal with waste at the University of Melbourne now and certainly respiring to zero waste to landfill like I know a lot of my sector colleagues are doing the same.

But before we get started, I would like to acknowledge that I am on the lands of the Wurundjeri people from Kulin Nation who have been custodian to this land for thousands of years and acknowledge and pay respects their elders past and present. And I would also like to acknowledge their lands or the Aboriginal lands on which you are all on today as it is a virtual event. So, let's get into it then, shall we? Choose to reuse. What do we mean by choose to reuse at the university of Melbourne? Well, it is pretty simple. It is what it says.

It is a free, reusable dish service offered at the University of Melbourne, and we have essentially gone back to basics. We allow, we run a service which allows staff students and any visitors to purchase food and drinks from our retailers using reusable tableware. With this simple idea obviously, to reduce waste to landfill. As you can see, some great pictures. And those are actually members of the team. You can see some great pictures of us, essentially, it is what the services is. We at the University of Melbourne, I am really delighted to say have a sustainability Framework and we did make a public commitment as a university back in 2016 when we developed our Sustainability Charter, which basically outlined our principles and our values as to the direction we wanted at the university to go in. This is an enduring document. We developed our first sustainability plan in 2017 and that ran to 2020 and we are just about to launch our new plan from 2022 to 2030.

And that base includes all our targets and our priority actions over the coming eight years. We also then report on those targets publicly. So, there is a transparency there and essentially, we are held accountable. So, are we essentially doing what we set out to do. We do have a good overarching strategy at the university, and we are working towards it. On that note, in our original sustainability plan, we had just one target around waste that was to reduce waste to landfill to 20 kilos per person by 2020. Now I am delighted to say that we did actually achieve that, but we did not achieve on our own. We did achieve it because of COVID essentially. Because our campuses were closed, so in 2020 we got down to 13.2 kilos per person and in 2021 thirteen 13.1 kilos per person. We very much just hit that target. Now, we probably would not have done that if it had not been for COVID.

In the new plan, we have got a target to reduce waste and landfill to 10 kilos of person by 2025 and then working towards 0 waste landfill by 2030. We have developed a circular economy target. At the university, our targets are about improving the circularity of materials passing through the university. I think that is essentially the one that we really do need to work towards now. It is not just a case of reducing waste to landfill. It is about looking at all the material flows through the university. The aim of that really is to ensure that we keep resources in circulation for longer and to try and combat that throw-away society that we now live in. And that is where the choose to reuse campaign was born. We did not actually start from scratch. We did have an existing service at the University of Melbourne. It started in 2013 and was set up by a group of students who were obviously very concerned about waste then and it was called washed against waste and it was offered at our Union House. And it was just very simple. It just has some plates and some bowls, and they were distributed throughout the student union.

And then we had a commercial dishwasher down in the basement and they were washed. Now, unfortunately as things happen generally across the campus, it was started by some really engaging students, but then over time no students left and the basically the program went into a big decline without any real direction and management of that program. By the time I got onto campus in 2016, there were some odd posters lying around, some lonely plates dotted around the dining room. But it did not have that invigorating feel that it used to have.

Two things happened at the same time. The manager of Union House approached me to say this program still running, but really nobody' is engaging with it. Nobody was using it. If we were going to keep doing this, we really needed to renew some interest in the service. And at the same time, the director of Space Management also contacted me to say, look, we really need to breathe some life back into Union House. We were in the process of developing on new student precinct, which are going to talk to you in a bit later, but that was going to be our new big brand-new precinct. But it was not going be coming online for another three years. So, we really wanted to sort of breath some life back into Union House. We decided to revamp the choose to reuse program. And that was a way we could obviously tackle our targets at the same time. That was approved, which was fantastic.

We had another thing that happened at that time as well is we were getting a lot of feedback through various channels from staff and students directly. Basically, they were telling us that the amount of waste they were seeing in Union House was quite frankly disgraceful. There was a lot of all sorts of different disposable items. Bins were overflowing. There were all sorts of different packaging being used. They basically reached out to us to say university of Melbourne really should be doing something about this. All those three things came together and aligned. In our initial conversations, we did have a chat about; do we down the compostable disposable route? Or do we just switch out the disposable items that we're using and just have a sort of better form of disposable? But we decided, no, that we really wanted to go back to the basics and really make much longer lasting change and really try and delve deep into people's behaviours.

I certainly remember when I was at university, I am going probably back about 25 years. But we had a food court that had plates and knives and forks and that kind of stuff. And I remember thinking, well, if I had that experience only 20 years ago, why can't we bring that experience back? I am delighted to say that in 2019, we had one of the old tenancies moved out. We redesigned and retrofitted that dishwasher hub, and we launched the program in 2019. We also decided that we are going to use that as a pilot for online and I am delighted to say has literally just come online in the beginning of 2022. You can see the lead in time that we had here, and I was involved in design conversations of the new student precinct back in 2018 all the way through to the current day. It does take a long time, obviously to design a building. But we sort of got in there from the start. I am delighted to say that is now we are now piloting it in that at the New Student Precinct as well.

So essentially why were we doing this? One of the biggest drivers for us was basically expectation from our staff and students. We received a lot of complaints and concerned emails. Our sustainability survey which we do every two years, really drew our attention. Students really wanted the University of Melbourne to do something about what they can visually see as an issue and something that they can personally take responsibility for as well. We also decided that it was going to improve the campus dining experience. How many of us have gone to have lunch somewhere and you have a paper plate or plastic plate, and you might have a little plastic fork and it doesn't grip your food properly? We really wanted to improve that campus experience. People come here to have a great time, but they also expect a certain level of service. We also wanted to implement circularity and to fit in with what Jean very much was talking about in reducing our single use and waste to landfill.

We knew that single use ban was coming. We very much looked at to the future and knew it was coming. We wanted to be on the front foot of which is absolutely fantastic, that ban is coming in. We wanted to create real, lasting behaviour change. Yes, we could have swapped things out for disposables and that is great if that is the only option. But we were lucky that there was another option for us, and we wanted to make sure we embrace that. And like I said, we also want to establish a reputation as being a leader in this space if we can be and really create that experience for our students. I do not think that I have to really preach to any of you guys but as we all know, plastic or single use disposable plastics really what is the cost of our convenience? A lot of the items that we were giving out in Union House, they are used for 20 minutes. Somebody picks up their meals, sits down at a table and chair provided in the dining hall, eats their dinner, and then throws it in the bin on the way out. And often they will throw that item in the wrong bin. We were generating a lot of waste when really, we did not need to do that. And as you can see some of these pictures, these are all dining, food court or retailer waste that comes from the food that we eat. We really want to see that reduced. So that was some of our motivation.

We really are fighting a war on waste. And recycling as we know is not the solution. Yes, obviously if we can, if we can generate items to go and recycle and that is part of the solution, but it is not the solution and we wanted to do something different at the University of Melbourne. We set up in Union House like I say back in 2019. This picture on the right is a picture of our dining court once it had been sort of revamped. Now with the agreement of all University of Melbourne stakeholders, we agree to a budget of 100,000. Now obviously, you know that some people could say that is a lot of money, which obviously it is. Have a saying that when you looked at the costs that go into purchasing disposables, when you look at the costs for the waste services, and if you look at the future, because let us agree, it's not all about money. And, then I think that is a small price to pay for the scheme that we have set up. We retrofitted existing tenancy space, which is great. We collaborated with all the retailers. We purchased reusable crockery and then obviously we launched the campaign.

Two things to think about here. When you look at that picture, there were two elements about here- we had to get the front of house change in place, so that is the infrastructure for the diners in the food court, signage to encourage people to know where they could pick up items. And we have placed all the bin signages to see and we made it very specific to the food that was actually going out in the food court. And then obviously getting people to use the service. And then there was obviously the back of house change. Obviously, the infrastructure of the dishwashing, processes of the cleaners and ensuring that everything was washed and returned in a timely manner etcetera. We had a series as you can see of pick up and drop off stations.

This is our dishwasher hub, but this was the revamped tenancy that we had. As you can see, we put a what we hope is a lovely sort of infographic on the side because this is actually quite a busy walk through. We did not want to hide the dishwasher hub away. We wanted people to actually understand that when they picked up a plate from the front end of the when they were getting their food that they could actually see that there was a consequence to that, and they could see the dishwashing going on. We purposely had the windows and the glass door, which is open on this picture, but we purposely had them so you could see through them so people could look in and see what was going on. The dishwasher ended up being along with the signage. I think the dishwasher hub retrofit was about 75,000. So originally estimated to be about 50,000, but there were a few issues with the services. Signage was about 15,000 and then purchase of crockery cutlery around 20,000. I do want to be up front with those costs, but obviously we saw it as very much a fantastic investment. At this time, we had- two plate sizes, 3 bowl sizes, two mug sizes and cutlery, a range of cutlery and we did go out to our tenants and ask what items they would like. We did have a bit of leftover stock from the old washed against waste program which we did use initially. But we did go and get some new items and we just wanted it to look plain and be durable, so we just went with the white crockery.

As you can see, there was a vast difference in the types of composition that these materials are made up of. Some are plastic, some are paper, some are PLA, some were paperboard with PLA lining. A lot of people were confused. People would take their food away, as we all know, and then they often did not know what to do with the item. A lot of it just ended up in landfill, even though a lot of that stuff could be recycled. So that was the aim was to get rid of a lot of that. In the process of setting up in Union House, we did upgrade all our signage. It was it was time for an upgrade anyways, so it was very timely. But we did give the space, basically a big nice visual overhaul. Previously on the front of those bins we just had, I think they were just three size posters. They were laminated. No one really saw them. No one engaged with them, and everyone basically ignored them. We had full size posters put on the front of the bins to make it more visually engaging. And we specifically link the pictures on the front of there to the products that were going out. So that there was a connection between the food that they were buying. Rather than just be a generic infographic, it was linked to the items that were coming through the food court and then the other thing we did was we put some engaging messaging on the side of the bins.

As you can see, we consume food not waste. Disposable containers used for 20 minutes but are here for a lifetime. And I do not know where the Darcy is, but our comms officer is on the line, but she came up with all that communication, which is fabulous. We then had stickers on the front of every tenancy telling them. Obviously, they could pick up the items and then we had our drop off stations here next to the bins where they could scrape their plates. Prior to this, we did not have a three bins system in Union House. So, all our food waste was essentially going into landfill bin. So, what this also gave us the ability to do is to collect food waste in the buckets. As you can see the picture on the left-hand side and then take that down to our food waste processor which is down in the basement. All our retailers were taken there, organics waste down to the food waste processor, but our front of house waste was not being collected. So, this then enabled us to not only collect our crockery and cutlery to be washed, but also collect our food organics to go back into the food waste processor. So at least we were diverting some organic waste from landfill. Because as we know our organics waste is one of the biggest components of our waste on campus. We did a survey back at the end of 2019 and obviously food was the biggest element of our waste bins. I think it was sitting at around 20 to 25%.

Getting our retailers on board, I have to say this was the biggest challenge. And it was the biggest challenge because a lot of the retailers had been practicing or having a service in Union has for a long time. This was a change for them, and we originally went round, we talked to everyone individually. And I remember when we sort of gave out the plates and bowls, we sort of gave them out and people kind of looked at them. But then they kind of put them away in a cupboard. And every time we go round and look to see where the plates and bowls where you could not see them. So yes, the success really stopped the program because we had a clean drop off station in the middle of the precinct that anyone walking past could pick up a plate. But the retailers were not giving out our plates. We had one or two keen retailers who really kind of got it. But most of them did not! But that really changed when we actually had a whole of precinct meeting. All the retailers were invited, everyone came along. I, the director of Space management, a few other people stood up and explained why we were doing this, and it was almost like the penny dropped. Because they could also see that you know what- it was not just asking them to make a change, we were asking everyone to make a change. They then felt collectively part of something bigger. And they also understood that this was a precinct wide approach. And it was not just them that were being asked to make those changes. Provided all those items, provided signage, and then the one thing we did do is we did set up a sustainability competition. Over the course of the next six months and the aim was then that we would have a bit of a vote at the end of the year, who was the most sustainable retailer. And they could basically win a couple of weeks free rent, which obviously is very favourable to our retailers.

That did not end up happening because that's exactly when COVID struck us down. But the intent was obviously there, and it was a game changer for us in engaging our retailers. From an engagement perspective, we also got on board a large number of volunteers. We run a student volunteering program here at the University of Melbourne. It was really easy to be able to add this particular activity onto the list of things that we offer to them. We had dedicated student volunteers who then provide their time and then they get they get a leader in sustainability award for it or and it meant that we engage as many staff and students as possible. We had prizes that give away, we had free coffee and it really helped raise engagement of the scheme and the volunteers themselves say they love taking part in it, which was wonderful. And what we did is that the start of each semester we had a cohort of students come in probably for two or three weeks, the start of each semester because we also understand that students change over. Generally, students come and go on campus. So, we really need to keep those communications up. So, the initial challenges that we had like I said, probably the biggest challenge we had was the buy-in from the food and beverage tenancies.

But like I say, once we provided support to them and have meetings etcetera, they very much came on board. We still do have challenge that and we understand that because a lot of our food and beverage tenants they have their own processes and procedures. But I do remember chatting to one retailer when we were looking at the new student precinct. And he looked at me and he said, ‘ohhh, my gosh, I could save thousands and thousands of dollars by engaging in this program’. So, there are real benefits to the retailers as well. That is what we want to see. And I have taken from customers like I said, those eager students that would see the dishes and stuff like that was easy. That is why we had the volunteers to make sure that there was good engagement. Some of the initial operational challenges like we ran out of items. We had to make sure that we refine our processes to make sure that we were cleaning them and getting back to the tenants quickly. Obviously, some tenants use more than others depending on the food offering they had. High attrition rates for some items. Now I must say, we were worried about some items but plates, crockery, not an issue. What does run out, though, is cutlery. And especially forks. Forks walk. And they walk a lot. So, the only thing I would say is - have a little bit of money in the budget to replenish your forks regularly. Probably the other thing was the cleaning stuff. There is a bit of uncertainty. But again, we added those processes as we kind of got going, which was fabulous.

OK! So, success. This is just some internal dashboards that we have here. But as you will see, the very faint pink line at the bottom as our 2018 mapping. We used to wash 1000 items a month if that it just kind of poodles along. You would see the cleaners wandered down to the basement, the big commercial dishwasher and wash about five items. But as you can see where we launched in July 2019, it absolutely skyrocketed. We washed around about 266,000 items by the end of the year. The sort of more solid red line there. You will see we started 2020 on a high. It was absolutely fantastic by the time we locked down on the 17th of March, we had washed almost 70,000 items. And as you would see then it completely plateaued because we did not open the service up again for 2020. With 2021 you will see we kind of got back up to speed towards may and there has been uncertainty. But I shall see then it basically plateaued again because we locked down.

And the blue line is us now. We have relaunched again, which is great. We are on the up, which is obviously the best place for us to be. Pretty obvious as the plates increased, the waste decreased. The more items we washed and the more our waste landfill came down which was fantastic to see because that was the correlation that we wanted and needed. Because that was obviously why we were doing it. And this is over a yearly basis as you will see. In 2013, obviously we had some great engagement and that kind of cooled off 2018. And as you will see, from 2019 are waste to landfill did decrease. That obviously was in correlation with COVID as well! We cannot claim all that success, but we can certainly claim a part of that and that is just the waste from our Union House.

So, what did we learn? We learned that we delivered a program that the community really cares about. We got a lot of very positive feedback. We went from having feedback that really did lead us feeling really frustrated and upset with people saying what a disgrace our food courts were to a lot of very positive feedback. Obviously, the retailers save costs on disposal packaging. We are facilitating infrastructure here for the community and we want people to do the right thing. And like I say, provide a better dining experience for all. We realized that retailers needed incentive to buy in. They needed constant communication and that was great. Certainly, for our new student precinct, there is a lot going on there. And you what, we learned that we could do it.

There were so many people that said to me, know what this is going to be hard, it is going to cost a lot. And what are you doing? Why don't you just get disposables? I have had even consultants just say, well, it is not going to work. Why don't you just go down the composting route? But you know what? Throughout all that, we decided to do it. And this kick started the first of reuse initiatives for us to support a more circular campus. Most importantly, it enabled us to have a successful pilot in time for our new student precinct. So, it was not easy, but it was definitely worth it.

So going on to our new student precinct, there are basically 6 brand new or retrofitted tenancies. This is a picture of the second building to open and this is our student pavilion which has got a dedicated food hall. Theoretically you should have about 20 retail tenancies. We are going to claim to be single use plastic free precinct which is fantastic. Because alongside the reuse we also drafted the University of Melbourne’s single use disposable standard. Which meant that the new tenants, new retail coming online or on board could not use any plastic-based products. No PLA based product. They all had to use the products approved by the university to ensure that they could be dealt with through our waste management services.

The biggest challenge was the dishwasher hub. It was in the original design then it was designed out. There was designed in, then it was designed out. So, I have to say for the new student precinct, it has been a journey. But I am delighted to say that it has now come back in. So, like I say, it got designed in, then it got designed out because this is a precinct and how are the crockery and cutlery going to flow across the precinct etcetera. And that was the original issue. But we lobbied hard the OPS (operations) team lobbied hard to make sure that it could come back in. The original solution was that OK, if we could not have a central dishwasher hub, then what we do is we ensure that all tenancies had the space for a commercial dishwasher and therefore they would do their own washing. At the time, it was a solution. But it was not the best solution that we could come up with. But it was definitely a solution we thought, OK, we'll go with that. We made sure that commercial dishwasher was designed into all retail spaces and that was a condition of the lease. Within this two- or three-years period, we also worked very hard with our leasing team, legal, etcetera, etcetera to ensure that we captured all this and more sustainability KPIs in our tenancy and lease agreements, which has been fantastic.

There were many, many conversations about how we were going to deal with this. I think it is probably the thing I have talked about most over the last three years, and we obviously had some key stakeholders on board. I have not made a typo here. I have purposely left the dishwasher hub as XXX because one of the things that happened is a couple of months ago, we decided that we were going to assign the dishwasher back in. So, we did. And so that is currently in. That is currently being retrofitted or installed at this precise moment in time. The retailers have dishwashing capabilities in their retail space, but we also have what we are going to call the overflow dishwasher hub and that will also service events and that kind of stuff as well. We also purchased lots of trolleys and we also purchased more crockery and cutlery. So, this time we went bigger. Our stakeholders from our pilot program told us that we needed more stuff. Now we have got two plate sizes, 3 bowl sizes. We have got three cup sizes: Espresso, latte & cappuccino. Cutlery, that also includes soup spoons, teaspoons, and reusable chopsticks. And, condiment balls, rice bowls, food trays, and indoor and outdoor trolleys. The only thing we did not service is straws. Because to be honest, they are too hard to clean. Too fiddly to clean in the speed that we need to get things back out and run in. However, we have stated that there are no plastic straws. They must be paper which can go in our third bin system.

So really, why did we do this again? At the University of when we had quite a unique and rare opportunity here because we were developing a new building from scratch, and we were coming in at a time where we knew what our aspirations for the future were going to be. It was hard because there was a lot of use and throw culture. Some of the people sort of who were very heavily involved in this project did not necessarily know and they had different priorities. There were lot of challenges in that respect. But again, we did it because we had a unique opportunity. How can you develop a program in your old student union develop, a brand-new building and then not bring along that behaviour change with it? We could not open a new precinct with disposable items and go back to three years ago. It had to come with us.

We are again wanted to create real behaviour change. I did have some conversations that people along the way who again said it is not going to work. It is going to be too hard. You might as well just switch to disposables. I had somebody tell me that. They have done surveys. Students want disposables. Well, sometimes you have to be the parents and sometimes you have to set up a system to enable them. I am sure my kids, given the opportunity of broccoli over sweets, would obviously choose sweets. We needed to make sure that we created some real behaviour change and we need to install infrastructure to support long term changes. Plus, there was certainly the expectation from our community that we were not going to go back on what we had already started.

So, what did we do? We used the successes of Union House and the student expectation as leverage, sustainability clauses into all the leasing agreements. This has been an ongoing process for 2-3 years. Designing dishwasher space in all tenancies. What I would say is, if you are in a similar situation and you want to go down this road and you do not have the ability to have a central dishwasher hub, then retrofitting if there is space. Most tenancies will have sinks and that kind of stuff. Being able to retrofit some dishwashing facilities into those tenancies might be the way for you. Although I know I have had conversations with friends and colleagues in the past who say they the biggest hurdle probably to this kind of program is having the ability to dishwash. But if you are able to look at things afresh, then I would definitely say, it is an absolute no brainer to support a circular economy and go down the reuse route. There is no comparison between continually turning over materials regardless, if there were disposable items going into compost. And yes, those are great if there are no other alternatives. But there is no comparison to ensuring we keep our products in their original state for as long as humanly possible. Reuse wins out in the end, every time.

The other thing we did was, no individual branding in these tenancies. All that reusable crockery and cutlery, we did not allow tenancies to brand it themselves. We wanted to demonstrate that everybody was equal and that everyone was in this together. And the other big thing that I would say is, along with all the challenges that we had, we kept talking as if it was going to happen. I cannot tell you the number of times I almost went home in tears when somebody told me yet again that your pipe dream of reuse is not going to happen. But I kept just coming back and back and saying yes, it is. And I genuinely thank that due to everybody that not just me, there was a great big group of us that we just persevered and kept going.

These are some pictures of our new student precinct. You would see obviously the dirty dishes there. You would see our drop off trolleys, which are outside. They have been retrofitted by some of our guys on campus, and I think they look fabulous for a little organics' buckets there on the side and there is some of our internal trolleys that the cleaners go around to pick up the items. The way it works is the cleaners will basically provide busing service. They take dirty plates back to the to the tenants and then they also take other dirty dishes once the dishwasher hub is open back to the dishwasher hub as well. The other new things we implemented in the student precinct that we did not necessarily introduce in the in the Union House, was the introduced three bin system. We now have the inclusion of organic bins front of house. And those fronts of house organics will be processed off site because obviously we realized we could not 100% get rid of disposables. That was not actually realistic, but because of the standard that we brought in, it just means that any disposals that are brought in are compostable, and they will then go off with our food wasted process off-site. However, our back of house organics are still going to be processed by a food waste processor. All the organic waste coming out of our tenancies will go into that food waste processor. We do still have the ability for people to put their organics and their cutlery in there as well. So, we can obviously take some of those organics back behind the scenes as well.

The other big thing in the contracts that we did is all waste will be weighed. Tenants will be charged the waste management fee, which will be calculated how much landfill they produce. Instead of having a set fee for waste management, it is going to be the first year where they see go into measure and weigh all the waste. We are in a good position because obviously we are developing our ways to have at the same time, but it is simply a set of scales. The cleaners will take the waste, they will allocate the waste per tenancy in a simple system just with a sharpie pen. And written on the tenancy, number one or whatever, that will be weighed and then that will be that will be accounted back to the tenants. So hopefully again that incentivized the tenants to reuse and reduce as much possible. One thing that I would say is what this really did was, we basically kick started a reuse revolution on campus and that was also primarily as a part of the development of the new targets within the sustainability plans. So, the other thing that we did sort of the beginning of this year was, we brought in the events where you service before COVID. But we ramped that and as you can see the picture at the top. We have actually bought these items and they are not melamine. They look like melamine, but they are sort of rice husk. They are used now for all our food trucks and our outdoor markets. It is fabulous and wonderful to see them being used. We have also banned plastic disposable drink bottles on campus now.

Again, I had quite a few people say to me, ‘my gosh, how have you done that?’ Well, we basically just wrote it into the contracts. And we basically said to all retailers, you cannot provide disposables. You cannot provide takeaway beverages in disposable bottles. They have to be Aluminium, glass, or paperboard. I do appreciate there are issues with paper board as well but let us deal with one thing at a time. And obviously we know that the container deposit scheme is coming soon as well. So that will support us. That is written into all our contracts. Not just our contracts but also into all our vending machines across campus as well. We have acted very timely. We were just renewing our vending machine contract across campus. And all plastic drink bottles are banned in there as well. And we have got a road map with our vending machine company as well to reduce all single use plastic packaging on campus over a number of years period. That also goes for the supermarket that is going to be coming onto campus. We have already had a meeting with them, and they will be phasing out all single use plastics over a set period of time.

The other thing we have done is we have implemented Green Caffeen and that is also thanks to some of our colleagues who I wonder if they are on the line. But a number of our sector-based colleagues in tertiary education have gone down this route which is great. We have got to reuse vending machines. So now you can purchase water bottles, keep cups and straws, cutlery, everything out of our vending machines. Because one of the issues was, if you want them to go reuse, how can they buy it they forgotten it? Now we have provided reuse access to on campus. We have got our new equipment and new service. And this year, we are going to launch an E-waste program across campus as well, which is great. We are looking at our electrical equipment.

Just the final top tips; set your expectations! Make sure that you are in communication with all your food and beverage tenancies. If you can, make sure that this is spread across all of them. So that there is a default offering for all your customers. You will see there the picture on the left at one of our lovely cleaning staff collecting some plates. They are outside, and then obviously some of our friends using it. Retailers and cleaners are the crucial link in this chain. I could go into so much more detail and everything we have done, and certainly I am very open to for anyone who wants to get in contact with us and talk to us about that. But the retailers in the cleaners are the crucial link. Continual feedback, continually talking to your retail tenancies and continually making improvements is where we have sort of bought into this. Stakeholder engagement is crucial.

Would we do it again? Hell yes, we do it again! What I would say is please do not give up. Sometimes it can feel like you are fighting an uphill battle and sometimes the challenges can feel too big. But really, the sense of achievement and what we are creating here at the university is fantastic. I really would say that keep pushing and acting as if it is going to happen. I would say, my team were very lucky. We had our director of Space Management, our leasing managers, our facilities managers were all keen to get on board. And I think I do not know about other people on this call, but I have seen a significant shift in attitude around sustainability and around waste and circular economy etcetera over the last a few years. So, I would say that the time is right to have these conversations. So many people want to do the right thing. They want to get involved, but they just either do not know how or it is not in their remit. They are going to look to you as either a sustainability professional, as a retailer, as somebody who manages a food court, whatever it may be, they are going to look to you for that leadership and that drive to get this happen. What I would say is keep pushing, keep acting. There are people out there in the sector now doing it.

Please do give it a go. Collaboration is the key. The other thing I would say trial and error. It is all trial and error. When look back to what we pushed out in 2019 and we really were starting from, it was just a bunch of us, basically, on how we going to do this. But it worked out and we just plugged away and it was brilliant. And the data speaks for itself. This program works, our wasteful landfill has gone down. The positive engagement we are getting back and just remember it is not all about the money. Yes, it might seem a lot, but really the significant amount of money that are spent doing all sorts of things, your money really is probably one year's worth of disposable packaging that is out there in the community and really the community needs strong leadership. We are drowning in waste. We really need to make real, long-lasting change. It was not easy, but it is worth it. Thank you everyone so much for your time everybody. I hope I have not gone too over. Happy to take any questions that anyone has. Thank you again.

Jean Young:

Thank you, Sue for that fantastic overview of what you have done and what you have achieved at the University of Melbourne. It is very inspiring and very fantastic to see the work that you guys are leading in the reuse space. To kick off while we wait to see if any questions do come through the email, I am interested to know how successful your program is and what the impact of it is? Just curious to find out how does the University of Melbourne go about actually collating the data around diversion? Is that on the retailers or? Keen to understand how that works?

Sue Hopkins:

We started off with a fairly crude system if you like. As cleaners are stacking our dishwashers, they have pen and paper and they write down how many plates, mugs, cutlery go through that particular cycle. It is a very simple system, but it works, and it is consistent across the organisation. I did actually have somebody the other day to me, we can stop doing that now can't we? I had to say, we could not stop doing that. We are going to continue to do that. In the new student precinct, we it differently. But it will be probably similar as our cleaners are still involved. They are consistent members of staff, and they will record plates as they get washed and cutlery as well.

Jean Young:

Great, thank you. Another question is just around the ongoing costs. I guess to manage these programs, has it been significantly more expensive for the University of Melbourne to deliver this program?

Sue Hopkins:

No. I suppose the biggest cost were initial setup and the costs of the equipment. We retrofitted a lot of trolleys and used the stuff we already had. But really the biggest ongoing cost is the cleaning staff who clean the crockery and cutlery. There are a number of ways we manage these costs. We absorb some of the costs, but also that is factored back into the tenancy’s agreements. Because obviously the tenants that themselves and as retailers, they are obviously saving money on disposable items and so there is a there is an element of savings there. But it is a shared cost model between us all. Now, it has been absorbed into our operations. When you do a cost analysis, if you think about landfill levies going up, so there is going to be a significant increase in landfill. If you look at it that way, the amount of money we are going to save on a landfill levy and you save obviously on buying their disposable items in the 1st place, it really is a cost-effective way of doing it.

Emilia Bisogni:

So, I have just got some questions coming through. The first one was around the banning of bottled water. How was that received? And if there was a replacement, what was it?

Sue Hopkins:

Yes, we did have a couple of retailers contact us and say how are we going to do this. The big question that we also got was ‘is our PET classified as sustainable?’ And ‘can I still have plastic bottles because basically coke have told me that our PPT is recycled?’ We said no. No plastic water bottles at all. Most retailers I have to say were fantastic. They could see why we were doing this. We also allowed people, to phase out withing the timeframe. We asked them to swp out with alternatives. If there was an alternative, either a can or a glass or whatever else, they could go with that. If there is no alternative, then we would look at this together over certain time period. We worked with them. My team pulled together a number of alternatives, which we provided to the retailers. And I must admit they all got on board. I even had a tenant come up to me on campus only a couple of days ago, chatting to me about the changes that have been made. There was some pushback initially. But when you stand firm and they can also see that everybody else on campus is doing the same thing, they get on board. This is all retailers and all vending machines. We provided the reuse options. We have got lots of water bottles on campus and we have the reuse vending machine. We provided enough alternatives for people to basically get a glass of water or can of coke, whatever it may be.

Emilia Bisogni:

Thank you. There was another question around the additional operating budget for the cleaners to take on the dishwashing role, which you might have answered. But I am also following on from that, how do you manage the customers who do want to take away food to their desk or outside the buildings?

Sue Hopkins:

We have basically said that take away items includes the whole of the campus. We are happy for somebody to go to one of our retailers, pick up a plate and bring it back to their office or their classroom or whatever it is. When we did the pilot in Union House, we realized that was going to happen. I had a couple of people in the library called me one day and they said ‘Sue, we've got those plates and cups in the library we have. They all come from?’ And that is when we realized that not only will we encouraging people to take them away, but people were taking them away. We basically put out communications to the community to say that when we say take away that take away meant the whole precinct. We know the target hotspots and we will go around and have some collection bins in those places. We probably are going to encounter some of those challenges in the new student precinct because I think we have only launched in the last couple of days. But we do need to talk to people about what takeaway means, and we will monitor that closely. And we will see this sort of level of reuse compared to takeaway. Again, we will do surveys, we will talk to our retails, we will talk to our community to remind them that actually take away means the whole of the campus. The only thing I will say is I am not sure if we will ever stop people disappearing with our forks. We finally figured out why they walk with our forks. And it is because, we also have a lot of reheat stations on campus. So, people were bringing their own food. They would bring in their Tupperware container and they would go and sit down, and they would pick up a fork from the food court, and then they would pop the fork in their container, and they would walk away. They would not realize they are doing it. And that is where we realize what was happening is people did not mean to do it. They were picking up a fork and then just forgetting that they had brought it from home. But that is OK. If I have to replace a couple of forks, never mind.

Emilia Bisogni:

Are we able to share our tender specifications or the sustainability clauses in our leasing agreements with people? I am sure, we could.

Sue Hopkins:

I am sure there is some way that we can do that. Not a problem. Just email us and we will get back to you. We would love to work and collaborate with all our lovely sector colleagues out there.

Emilia Bisogni:

Great. We got a few more questions coming through. We will try and get through as many as we can. What were some of the key points? Did we use our business case? Or was it the saving for the retailers?

Sue Hopkins:

I would say the biggest incentive, or the biggest argument was that the students expected it. They had an expectation from their customers. I just pulled together all the feedbacks we got and the complaints that we got. Those were probably the biggest drivers. The other driver was the dining experience. At that time at the university, we were really looking at how we could improve the campus experience. Not just in this space, but in lots of other spaces as well. My team sits within our campus management and that was a big question that was going around. Yes, obviously there was very much about hitting our target and our sustainment plan. If you don't have that central target, it does make it a bit trickier. Because every time I had a conversation with somebody, we could say that we had a target to hit. So, we had to do this, and this was the best way to do it. One of the tenants said to me that they can spend up to $100,000 a year on disposable packaging. That is just one tenancy. That cost is significant. Including all those arguments such as, it’s what our students expect, better dine in experience, better campus experience, hitting our targets etc brought it together. And we are also showing that University of Melbourne is doing its bit for sustainability with this global challenge. We kind of weaved it all together.

Emilia Bisogni:

Thanks. And these are two questions around COVID. Was there anything additional we needed to do after COVID to meet health requirements? Do we need any additional signage to reassure people about using the reusables?

Sue Hopkins:

Yes. This was obviously a big pain point during COVID, and we had many conversations COVID around as soon as COVID hit. We thought that we had to go to disposables. But during COVID, there was no government mandate to say you could not use reusables. In fact, I made many phone calls to the Department of Health and various other organisations to ask if we had to legally stop using reusable. And they said there were no regulations around reusable tableware. There was no mandate. There was nothing to say that by washing a cup, it wasn't COVID safe. Obviously, we closed the campus. But there was nothing to say that we couldn't use our reusable service. We made sure that our communications highlighted the hygiene and COVID safety measure. We said that these items are go through a commercial dishwasher. They are sanitized and they are up to health standards. Just like any restaurant you go to across the globe.

Emilia Bisogni:

Perfect. Do you see other industries or precincts where this idea would be suited? And are there opportunities to take this idea further than outside just universities?

Sue Hopkins:

Absolutely. When I went to university, we had a refractory in the UK that had crockery and cutlery. If you go to IKEA now, they use reusable plates and cutlery in their food court. We did a number of site visits when we were setting up originally. We went to Emporium in here in Melbourne. They have reusable crockery and cutlery. This is not a new idea. In fact, it is completely and utterly going back to basics. We have changed the narrative of retail of the last 20 years due to convenience. I would say that this particular reusable scheme is so scalable. You could start with one retailer, you could have a whole precinct, you could start with one item, you could start with one retailer. You could scale it up or you could scale it down. It is completely and utterly transferable. There is no doubt about it. Every step of the way.

Emilia Bisogni:

And the next one - did we conduct any research with people with disabilities while we were setting up the program?

Sue Hopkins:

I must be brutally honest. We did not at the beginning, but we have done that since. Certainly, when we were setting up our reusable cup scheme, we had spoken to people with disabilities about that. We discussed what they would like to see, and we did ensure that so our drop off stations were all DDA compliance. We made sure that they right height and for wheelchair users. Because we are using a trolley-based system, so it has to be suitable. We want to make this absolutely suitable for absolutely everybody.

Emilia Bisogni:

Perfect. What are the percentage of the decrease in the retailers' disposable container purchases compared to before the program?

Sue Hopkins:

The only stats I can give you is that our waste to landfill went down by 30% in our Union House prior to COVID shutdown. One thing I do remember chatting to one of our retailers during that period and he told me that his waste had reduced by at least 50 to 60%. He said that he would carry probably 6 bin bags. And now he claimed that had been cutting half. He was now only taking about 3 bin bags at a time. So that just goes to show that as one of the retailers experienced.

Emilia Bisogni:

I do have quite a few more questions here and I know that there were some people who had multiple questions in their email, but we did save the last 10 minutes to go back to Jean to talk about some potential funding. I do promise that I will get back to your emails this week. I will pass over to Jean for the conclusion.

Jean Young:

What is next? For us, we are aiming to provide funding for limited number of pilots of reuse systems in the following sectors across Victoria. So, we are looking at similar to what the University of Melbourne has just presented. Permanent markets, shopping centres, food Halls at university campus or a similar setting. The aim of the pilot program is to understand interest in this space and gather knowledge on the feasibility for businesses looking to implement reusable systems. The outcomes of these pilots would also feed into the design of future circular economy programs as well. And funded projects would need to be in operation by March 2023, which, may not align with everyone's requirements of approvals, etcetera.

We are accepting the applications for the pilot program. We are keen to talk to any organizations that are currently using single use plastic items that are included in the ban and would be interested in piloting a reuse system or discussing this opportunity further. Following this master class, we will send a follow up email with more information regarding the pilots. If you are interested, we would be really keen for you to reach out to me directly. That basically was a wrap up. I would like to thank the University of Melbourne for their fantastic presentation and providing a fantastic model of what is possible. Obviously, there are a lot of challenges. But as Sue has kind of highlighted, there are also benefits for consumers, businesses, and organizations. This webinar will be recorded. We will also send that through. Feel free to share with any of your other relevant networks that were not able to attend.

Thank you all and bye for now!

[End of transcript]

Reuse Solutions for Events

Masterclass

Tuesday, 12 July 2022

Presented by:

moderator:

Brij Parmar

Project Advisor

Speakers:

Jason Rahilly

James McLennan

Jess Fleet

Will Overman

Berish Bilander

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Welcome to the Reuse solutions for events – Masterclass’, ‘We will be starting shortly ….’]

[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]

Brij Parmar:

Okay. So hi everyone. Welcome to Reuse Solutions for Events Masterclass by Sustainability Victoria. My name is Brij Parmar and I’m also joined by my team leader Jane Young and we are running Single Use Plastics Business Engagement Program. We’re absolutely thrilled to have so much interest in this space and we’re delighted to see some familiar faces and looking forward to making new connections.

So I’d like to begin today’s session with an acknowledgment of the country. So I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands upon which I am based today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. I also pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the lands from which you are joining us today. I acknowledge that we live and work on the lands of the world’s oldest and most sustainable culture. I acknowledge the deep connection to the Earth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their invaluable contributions to our understanding of climate change and the environment.

So today I’ll provide a brief overview of the single use plastic policy, SV’s business engagement activities and then we will hear from our presenters on how they’re implementing reuse solutions at various events. Today we have wonderful speakers from the events and festival industries. Our first presenters are Jason Rahilly and James McLennan from B-Alternative, then we have Jess Fleet and Will Overman from Green My Plate, followed by Berish Bilander from Green Music Australia.

We have time allocated for questions and answers at the end. If you have any questions after all three presentations please either type in via the Chat or you can unmute and ask during the Q&A session.

So many of you are aware of the problem with single use plastics. The plastic pollution harms our health, wildlife and environment. To help stop plastic pollution the Victorian Government is going to ban single use plastic straws, cutlery, plates, drink stirrers, expanded polystyrene food and drink containers and cotton bud sticks from February 2023. The ban will also apply to degradable and compostable plastic items such as bioplastics. This is a deliverable of the circular economy policy.

As a part of this process we recently asked Victorians for their views on the draft rule for the ban. Over 1,600 Victorians responded with overwhelming support for the action like this ban to reduce plastic pollution. The Government is now considering feedback received during the public consultation with the regulation to be finalised in September this year. We will be sharing all these links at the end of the webinar for the best experience.

Sustainability Victoria is running a program that is supporting food service businesses transition away from single use plastic items. This will include providing business focused resources masterclasses like this one and grants as well as localised business engagement activities across Victoria. But through this session it’s all about learning how to make events sustainable especially considering the upcoming ban. It would be an understatement to say that we love our events and festivals in Australia. They’re a key component of developing a sense of community and pride, generating economic growth and giving cities identity. Making events sustainable has become essential for achieving sustainable development goals. It can minimise all potential negative impacts on the environment and have great benefits on the communities and all involved.

We have a few speakers from the industries today who are going to present their work and share some insight in this sector. So let me just stop sharing and introduce you to the speakers.

So our first presenters are Jason Rahilly and James McLennan from B-Alternative. Jason is a founder and Director and James McLennan is a General Manager. They both have extensive experience in the business sustainability sector. They have worked with small to medium businesses, not for profits, councils, corporate and Government bodies in certain activities through facilitation, inspiration, community engagement, experience and curiosity. Welcome B‑Alternative team.

Jason Rahilly:

Thanks Brij.

And thanks everyone who’s there. James are you mute?

James McLennan:

Yeah. Thanks mate.

Thanks Brij. Great to be here today. And Jason and I obviously are in different locations in Victoria today so we will be trying to throw to you and not cut each other off.

So before I start I would like to certainly acknowledge the traditional lands that I’m on on Gadubanud country and the Gunditjmara people who have been custodians of this land for thousands of years. And I would hope that in some of the topics we’re talking about today we are actually talking about the preservation and rehabilitation and regeneration of the land as well in which they did for so many thousands of years.

Jason Rahilly:

Yeah. And I’ll echo that sentiment here on Boonwurrung country. And I guess our custodian respect is really deeply ingrained within our business model and our social enterprise. So I don’t think anyone in the colonised world is doing as well as the custodians but we’re doing our best to get back to what they value in the land as well.

I guess a lot of what we’re going to touch on today is our model that is echoing those sentiments. And I think one thing that I hope that everyone can sort of gravitate towards during this little short snippet is how easy this model is and making the environmental change for festivals and events a really easy transition. If people can find the environment easy they’re all going to take it on in their day to day lives. So we’ve always found as Brij was pointing out before single use plastic is a really simple, low hanging fruit to get people engaged with the environment and we’re going to touch on how we can utilise events in that space. And again echoing what Brij said around events are a really good stabilising point to sort of increase the education into the community. So I’ll leave it over to James for the next little section and we look forward to speaking to you all.

James McLennan:

Yeah. Awesome. So we’ll start off with a little bit about B-Alternative and what we do and then sort of move in to our event specifically and then finish off with a few case studies of events we’ve worked with and some of the really key success stories we’ve had in the past.

So we are now a social enterprise. We’ve always called ourselves or referred to ourselves as a social enterprise but in the last few months we have become a certified social enterprise. And essentially we are working with anyone, organisations, businesses, schools, whoever it may be to implement more regenerative practices and reduce their impacts on the environment.

Brij if you can flick to the next slide. So here in a nutshell is what we’re doing with whoever it may be we work with whether it be an event or a school. We diversified greatly through COVID in what we’re doing with events sort of going down the drain. So we basically took what we were doing with events from the waste management and the consultation with event organisers and pretty much picked that up and took that to any organisation supplying packaging, compostable packaging at that, or even better, reusable models as well. But then looking around the education side of that and how we can actually educate for change and then through marketing the education as well and really have an increased impact with their audience as well.

So in terms of our work with events we’ve been in this space now for coming up sort of seven years and we’ve had some pretty profound impacts with events. A lot of our work is done pre‑event. We meet with the event organisers and a lot of the engagement is done in this time as well. So we look at what events they’ve done in the past, the wins they’ve had, the impacts they’ve had, and then we look at all areas of the event of what’s coming in to the event, what’s being used, the punters, the demographic of them. So we get a really good snapshot of what’s been happening in the past and how we can actually change that moving forward.

So even down to – there’s a few images on the screen – what water is being used. So we have an elimination of plastic altogether, so plastic water bottles. We supply canned water instead of plastic. Down to the toilet paper used on site. So we make sure that the most ethical environmentally friendly toilet paper is sort of purchased through us as well. And by controlling that we’re actually mitigating the risk of contamination in our streams but also minimising dramatically the general waste which is on the day too.

We’re also working with contractors. We’re doing punter sort of education pre the event and we’re working with the food vendors closely as well to make sure that they’re on board, they know the drill and they’re aware of the practices we’re going to be implementing on the day too.

So come event day we’re all set up. Everyone’s sort of in the best place possible and we can start rolling out the actual systems on the day as well which I’ll throw to Jase to talk about.

Jason Rahilly:

Yeah. Thanks mate. Appreciate that. I think if we can go back a slide sorry Brij. Just talking about the event as you can see there we’ve created our own reusable – so we use them resource recovery stations rather than bin stations. Again it’s about changing that vibe, that conversation around waste. As soon as someone uses the term waste in their mouth basically that’s how we behave. So we’re really trying to encourage people to see everything as a resource. And we’ve found those bins or those resource recovery stations in particular quite engaging. So I think when the event comes along as James just said before we’re using it as a small school basically. If we get a patron number – we’ve got some examples coming up where we’ve got a patron number of say 20,000 people. If there’s 20,000 people in a community that’s 100,000 strong and we can get 20,000 people to change their behaviour in a positive way and feel good about it all it takes is them to talk to five other people and you’ve got a whole community that’s completely spun around their mentality around how they behave in their community. So we’re really seeing events as a really good catalyst for that and a really good opportunity for that.

So obviously we’ve got images of recycling and our biggest one is definitely reusables. So that’s probably the next slide there Brij if you can bro.

Thanks. So this is a really, really simple step by step process that we’ve brought in to events and we’ve seen again other groups doing amazing stuff with this space as well. It is a collaborative effort. It’s going to take everyone to get involved with this. Our products are made from risk husk. So they are a biproduct of the rice industry in the world I guess. So that’s all getting used as a reusable system. It’s all completely food safe and all the rest of it. Meets everything it needs to do and then if it does get broken – I mean let’s be honest, it’s a party so things do get broken at parties – we can just throw it in the compost and it does get eaten by worms and micro‑organisms.

So it’s a little bit more costly but it’s definitely worth it in the long run in our belief. But I guess it really echoes our party with the planet model. So as you can see in this model here, the reusable model, for patrons it’s a really simple step by step process and for the event itself it’s a really simple step by step process. I think what we’re really calling on for people especially in these sorts of groups and the courage that Sustainability Victoria has got to take these sort of models is we’re asking people to have the courage to actually challenge these new systems and go let’s take it on rather than thinking it’s too hard. And that’s what excites us. So we’ll just go to the next slide if you can Brij.

James McLennan:

Just before you go in to some post-event stuff as well a few key things which we’ve found are big problems with events as well. Jase mentioned about the resource recovery stations. So we’ve found problems in the past of actually having bins on site. As soon as people see a bin it doesn’t matter what colour the lid is they see it as a bin and they sort of just cognitively go for it and put anything in. So by removing those bins that’s how we started finding the greatest success of decontaminating which meant less work for our staff back of house.

But also little things like knowing our contractors, knowing who we’re getting to remove the waste and knowing what skips are on site but also by removing co-mingled recycling. Even if we know a contractor is doing combing recycling and they are sorting we still prefer to go a glass, a stream of aluminium, a stream of metals and cardboard and so forth. That way it’s actually a lot cleaner and we can guarantee it’s getting recycled as well.

Jason Rahilly:

And we see that reflecting in the economics of it as well. The festivals and the events will save money because if someone says it’s co-mingled and they’re getting charged the same as landfill it becomes pretty transparent as to where it’s actually going. So once we see reduced rates in clean streams like glass and aluminium and that’s reflected back to the event then we know it’s actually being done properly as well as the fact that we follow them to be honest.

But you can also see here in the post-event. Now this is a non-camping event. With our events we also do campground education and that’s a huge part of reducing landfill at an event and that’s a really, really successful model as well. But this is a non-camping event and you can see the difference from this festival in particular that had no engagement from an external environmental group in 2018. 2019 they went from zero to hero and went we just want to go reusable, do whatever it takes, and you can see the drastic change in that result right there. The resource recovery station was a collaboration with Bellarine Catchment Network at the time. So we both collaborated on that resource recovery station. If we can grab the next slide Brij that would be great.

Thanks mate. This is another example of a bigger festival. This is 27,000 people strong. Queenscliff Music Festival. Again the first year we worked with them we went to fully compostable and that was a really great turnaround from their landfill reduction. So we provided all the compostable packaging and things like that and made sure it was all completely legitimate and made sure it went to the right facility. And then you can see here that we went to reusable. And you’ll note there that there’s actually a huge percentage of glass. Because this was done on a tonnage ratio. Glass is obviously heavier than others. And the bars were using a lot of glass so that’s why we had such a big result there. But if you look around you can see general waste there with basically nothing, cardboard wasn’t much, but probably the next biggest thing was organics again based on weight. So when you go reusable you still get good weight and tonnage in your organics because it is heavy food matter.

So again another really positive result that did influence into the town and we had conversations with the council after that event because they wanted to look at evolving that township off the back of that event. If we can get the next slide Brij.

And this is just another example. So this is a group we’ve been working with for a long time now, one of our more senior groups. And you can see that beautiful trend and a lot of that trend is actually reflective of the campground education. So they haven’t gone reusable yet but this is our compostable model incorporated with our campground education model. And again that stat, I mean it’s pretty clear how effective it can be. And these aren’t huge investments by these events to bring this sort of challenge in and they’re getting the results from it. And the other thing to remember is as well that what we’ve seen from patron engagement has always been really positive. Be mindful with any group no matter who you’re working with you’re always going to get one or two people out of 100 that are going to complain. I really urge people in this movement not to give the squeaky wheel the grease. Ignore it. Focus on the 98 people that do care about the positive impact you guys have had and you’ll continue to see these sorts of stats across the board.

I’ll flick it over to you James.

James McLennan:

Yeah thanks Brij. If you can flick to the slides.

So essentially we have our two main models, the compostable which is all the compostable packaging and then the reusable which is all the reusable items. Reusable is our preferred and we really try and push that with events so much so that we’ve actually reinvented how that works financially and it’s now going to cost the events pretty much zero depending on the number. But we’ve actually worked out a way we can actually get it fully funded and happy to chat further about that.

We are looking at growing this into the future and getting more stock so we can actually do larger festivals than what we have say with Queenscliff and we’re also looking at grant opportunities as well to get a fully electric truck that is our wash station as well. So an upgrade of what we’re currently using. So some exciting things on the horizon for us with that. And basically Jase as the Director and founder of B-Alternative set this up because he saw a need for this and I think it’s the power of basically seeing the change that you want to see in the world. And we really want to work and evolve what we’re doing and what other groups are doing like this as well which you’ll hear from as well next. And we’re happy to answer any questions later on too.

Jason Rahilly:

And we are excited to hear from the other groups because this is a collaboration. It’s going to take everyone no matter what your belief is. Partying with the planet not against it is something we’ve always really hinged ourselves on and we believe in that pretty strongly. And I guess remembering that all the causes in the world and all the things that we’re inspired by in the world whether it be traditional owners’ respect or women’s rights or all these things that are really, really important, none of them can happen without a planet. So I guess with everyone out there who’s inspired to help the planet we are just as inspired to work with you and make sure that we can all achieve the best things possible. And really grateful to Sustainability Victoria for putting this on because I think it’s definitely required. And Brij you’ve been awesome to deal with mate so really grateful for that.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s such a great insight into especially the community engagement and education. Great insight. Thank you so much Jason and James. So moving on to our next presenters.

Our next presenters are Jess Fleet and Will Overman from Green My Plate. They are co‑founders of Green My Plate. They have extensive experience in the event management sector and working on the ethos of make dishes not waste they bring their knowledge and passion of sustainability to each project leaving long lasting impact. So welcome Green My Plate team.

Will Overman:

Thanks Brij. Can you see our presentation? You’re all good?

Jess Fleet:

You can see everything?

Will Overman:

Cool. So thanks Brij for having us and thanks to James and Jason for their presentation. We’re coming to you today from Byron Bay. So we’re not in Victoria at the moment. We’re working up here at Splendour. So I’d like to begin today by acknowledging the Arakwal people of the Minjungbal nation, traditional custodians of the land on which we present to you for today. And I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

So we are Green My Plate. I’m Will. This is Jess. And Ryan is our third partner who’s not here today. We’re the three co-founders. We started in 2019 having worked in events for over ten years and we were finding very little solution to waste minimisation within the industry. Little did we know our event management experience would prove extremely beneficial to the rollout of GMP’s success.

Green My Plate is a sustainable service aimed at eliminating single use food packaging from events. We supply reusable plates and bowls to food vendors and then wash and recirculate. Our closed loop system is a benefit to events, conferences, exhibitions, cafeterias, anywhere where there’s food served. And single use plates and bowls are removed from the site leaving a cleaner footprint and less waste to clean as well as diverting waste from landfill.

Jess Fleet:

Hi guys. I’m Jess. So our mission. We are more than just dishes. We care deeply for our planet so have combined our passion for sustainability and event management to build a closed loop system with a meaningful impact. Our ethos is make dishes not waste creating much needed environmental awareness and mindfulness around single use waste.

With all of us co-founders being outdoor enthusiasts as well the inspiration behind Green My Plate started as a passion project turned full time gig for Will and I. Our low waste lifestyle also brings lots of learnings and knowledge to the business.

So here we have a quote that really resonated with us that we wanted to share with you. It’s just an important reminder for us and hopefully you guys as well of our mission. So I’ll just read it out to you. So ‘There are too many pressures on our natural systems and something has to give. We are intimately connected with nature whether we like it or not. If we don’t take care of nature we can’t take care of ourselves. And as we hurdle towards a population of 10 billion people on this planet we need to go into this future armed with nature on our side’. So that quote there is from Inger Andersen, the UN Environmental Chief. So again just something that resonated with us and no doubt with you all here it will with you as well.

So here we’ve got our closed loop system. Like Will said we provide reusables to events. So as you heard our mission, the main focus is sustainability and a solution to the ongoing problem of single use waste. Part of the solution is tailoring our service to the different variation of events. Another important focus of ours is the operational aspect of the service ensuring everything is running smoothly, food vendors are taken care of, Green My Plate bins are being monitored and of course doing this without compromising the customer experience. So it’s pretty simple. We drop the plates off to the food vendors. You then order your noodles or your burger, whatever food it is, and it is served up on a plate or bowl. You then return that plate or bowl into one of our Green My Plate bins which we’ll show you shortly and we then wash and reuse. And that’s the closed loop system there.

So I’m actually going to show you next a short video of our closed loop system in action at the Aus Open earlier this year. Hopefully our internet connection is strong enough that it doesn’t bounce around. I’m just going to hit play for ten seconds.

[START VIDEO PLAYBACK]

§(Music Playing)§

[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

Will Overman:

So the products we actually have in stock are a large plate, a small plate, a large bowl and a small bowl. We’ll be moving into cups soon. So we kept this product range just to give events different offerings. We’ve found that events are pretty specific with what they want before the event but once they sort of see it, feel it, touch it and they sort of adapt to what we have – so with that product range we can cater to all different types of food and different food vendors.

Are the plates safe to have onsite at an event? Absolutely they are. The plates are made of bamboo fibre and corn starch making them lightweight and event safe unlike your standard crockery at home. They’re also very durable. I have used one as a frisbee before. I wouldn’t recommend it but they don’t break and get the festival tick of approval.

So on our plate you’ll see it says ‘Please return me. I’m not rubbish’. This is important messaging and it just reinforces to people that are confused that maybe haven’t seen the system before as to what to do with it. So we’ve found as well as soon as that’s covered with paper or anything it actually reduces the effectiveness of it. So once someone finishes the food on their plate, they see that message, they know it’s going back to where it needs to.

Jess Fleet:

So how do event attendees return the plates? I’m just going to pause that video for a second. So you’re staring at what we hope to be the new normal, the pink bin. So this here is actually one of my favourite photos because as you can see inside the bin is just full of plates and bowls. So that’s obviously what we want to see more of at events is reusables over single use. And we do find if you’ve got a red bin, a red general waste bin next to it there’s not much in there. So it’s great to see the reusables getting full. And I’ll just press play on this video here so you can see it being returned.

Will Overman:

And we chose pink as well because there’s nothing else like it. You can’t have it with the councils these days. They’ve got all those different coloured bins. So a bright pink bin, it stands out, it’s got messaging and people hopefully in the future will know that everything goes in the pink bin.

So do you provide dishwashing equipment? With every event being different we tailor the system to your event. For example some events may have a kitchen on site with a commercial dishwasher. Others may not. If you don’t have the equipment we need to get the job done. So we can source this for you. We will work with you to create the best sustainable, operational and stress free outcome for the duration of your event. So we use pass through dishwashers, under bench dishwashers, sinks and hot water and we can do it depending on your event in one dishwasher, three dishwashers. We can get the job done. So it’s easily scalable.

And we also provide staff as well. So our staff come in their bright green t-shirts and they’re easily identifiable as well. So again we can tailor the staff to your budget and your needs.

Jess Fleet:

So what else is included in the Green My Plate service? So we’re not all just plates and bowls. We come with pre-event project management. So we work with the event management team to implement the GMP reusable system into their waste management plan. We also assist with pre, during and post marketing and education on the Green My Plate system and we also liaise with food vendors, educating food vendors on the reusable system and arranging the products they choose to use.

We also supply not only reusable plates and bowls but all the sustainable tools to assist with washup for example coconut scrubs, dishwashing liquid, tea towels and cleaning products.

We also provide the Green My Plate brand of bin covers so the pink bin covers you saw before so that the plates can be returned. So those bin covers as well are for 240 litres bins. And then we also provide post-event reporting on how many plates you save from landfill. So we actually count each individual plate and bowl so then we’ve got the data at the end of the event and we can also utilise it as a marketing tool that you see here. So this here is an Instagram tile with the final number of plates saved from landfill at the Big Vegan Market which we serviced earlier this year. So it’s an awesome tool to congratulate the efforts of event attendees for returning their plate and again it’s awesome for your marketing as well.

Will Overman:

It also helps us set targets for following years as well. Knowing that say this year we saved 8,000 at that event hopefully next year we can double it or get more. So it’s a good way to set targets.

In terms of cost it’s very different per event. So we tailor the event based on your needs, your size, how many vendors, the time. So some examples. Some events might need staff. They might have volunteers which is something as well we do. We can leave volunteers which helps lower cost. And some may have kitchens and equipment. So we can tailor an event based on what you need.

So what events have we worked on? So that’s a good shot of the AO which we were lucky enough to be part of this year. So we were located in the newly curated Beach House. The GMP plates and bowls serviced three food vendors washing a total of 13,078 plates over the two week event. Our involvement this year was a pilot program with the aim to grow and take the initiative site wide in coming years. So it was good after two years of lockdowns and our plates being in hibernation to get out and do that pilot at the AO. So it was sort of a big coming out for us which was great.

So we were also part of Rising this year which was held at the iconic Sydney Myer Music Bowl. This three week event washed and reused over 53,284 plates, bowls and cups. By implementing our reusables Rising diverted 12.5 tonnes of what could have been single use food packaging from landfill.

So key learnings from these two events was that the system thrives in a somewhat enclosed area to simplify the return. It pays to have GMP staff either located at bin stations or roaming around the tables educating people. So there’s still a lot of education to be done in this space and it is new to a lot of people. So our staff communicated that with people and they were really receptive of it. So that’s something that we learnt. We need to push more and we need events to sort of invest in that as well to make the solution a lot easier to implement.

So you need to make sure investment is made in the right equipment to maximise our productivity but also maximise the space. One thing for these larger events is the amount of footprint we need to store plates. So at the AO we had a small amount of space but we maximised what we did with it which was a massive thing for us. So the biggest thing we learnt is if the food vendors are happy everyone’s happy and that way if the food vendor’s happy the patron gets their food on the plate on time. So yeah we just need to make sure they’re stocked up. And that people are really receptive to it. People are learning. People want to engage. And I think like the other guys said if the two in the 100 don’t then that doesn’t matter because the other 98 are really receptive. And that’s what we learnt this summer and since we’ve started. So people want change and they’re really receptive to it which is great.

Another key learning is that signage is key. So you see there Rising had it pretty clear but it needs to be at that level all the time. So for the people that sort of haven’t seen it before and are a little bit confused, when there’s no signage they’re just guessing and they’ll just put it wherever they think and then that’s not ideal for anyone. So good signage enhances the customer experience and leaves waste streams with less contamination which is what everyone wants. So investing in signage with our input is key.

Jess Fleet:

So other events we’ve serviced. So like Will said we did the Australian Open this year. We just wrapped up Rising which was a three week event. We also worked on the Grand Prix. We did the Big Vegan Market at the Royal Exhibition Building, the Glenroy Festival with Moreland City Council, Tourism Noosa Christmas Party. So we have ventured outside of Victoria and come over to Queensland. We’ve done the Broadsheet Media Bushfire Relief Picnic, Spanish Language Fiesta, the Australian Greens National Conference. So that one there’s really important to notice as well because it’s not only these big sporting events or music festivals that we are servicing. The great thing about Green My Plate is we can scale it to anybody. So whether it’s a 60 person conference to a 6,000 person event we can provide plates and our service towards. We’ve also serviced weddings as well. So those ones there were of the smaller size.

Will Overman:

And that’s important to note as well that there’s no event too small to make a difference. And that’s what we’ve always thought. So we hire items as well. So we’ve hired 30, 40, 50 items at once and people ask is it worth it. We said well every little bit counts. So if you’re thinking that you’ve got a 50 person party or something like that we can certainly service it. So every little bit counts.

Jess Fleet:

So as you can see there are many benefits to reusables. So yeah hopefully we can see you guys at the next event and switch your investment from people picking up rubbish to Green My Plate washing the dishes. Because as you can see with the plastic ban coming up single use will soon be in the past. So thanks guys for your time.

Will Overman:

Thanks guys. Thanks for having us.

Jess Fleet:

Thanks Brij as well.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you Jess and thank you Will. What a great presentation and some fantastic examples. So thank you so much.

And moving on to our next and final presentation. So musicians and artists can create social norms using the sphere of influence and they can amplify messages to make positive impacts. To shed more light on this topic last but not least our next presenter is Berish Bilander from Green Music Australia. Berish is a composer, musician and activist dedicated to climate and social justice. He has co-written and toured with a range of artists including Vika and Linda Bull, Jamie Faulkner and the new music ensemble Motion. As an activist Berish has worked with local climate action groups which support state and national campaigns run through Friends of Earth and in 2013 helped found Public Transport Not Traffic. Welcome Berish.

Berish Bilander:

Thanks Brij for having me and thanks everyone for your great presentations. I’m a big fan of that work that’s going on in the reusable space.

Before I begin I’ll just acknowledge that I’m calling in from the beautiful Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung country down south in Narrm otherwise known as Melbourne and I pay my respects to Elders past and present, any First Nations people that might be on this call at the moment. I really reiterate the sentiments expressed by Jase from B-Alternative at the beginning that we have a lot of catching up to do. There’s 80,000 plus years of learnings around how to treat this environment with a level of respect such that we can be custodians. So yeah I very much look to First Nations peoples for that guidance and knowledge.

So I’ll share my screen and hopefully it comes up. Let’s see.

Is that working?

Brij?

Brij Parmar:

Yes. It is good.

Berish Bilander:

Okay. Excellent. So yeah I’m calling in. My name’s Berish and I’m the CEO of Green Music Australia. So we are a relatively small not for profit organisation that’s Australia wide. We try to punch above our weight being relatively small but servicing what is a huge industry, many, many thousands of musicians across the country, thousands of live music venues, thousands of events. It’s a big job but we’re stoked to be in this space. And our mission is very much to help the music scene go green and create a safer future for us all. You only need to look at the recent floods to see what’s at stake here.

So yeah we’re harnessing the cultural power of the influential music scene. And that’s a really critical thing that I’m going to bring home today. A lot of the others have talked about really practical solutions at events and we lean on organisations like Green My Plate and B‑Alternative. There are a growing number of reusable solutions out there but we’re trying to also create the cultural change within the music sector so that they embrace these changes and they’re looking for the businesses like this to work with.

Bono famously said ‘Music can change the world because it can change people’. And we all know the power of music when we’ve sat in front of our favourite act or we’ve turned it on at night. We all know that marketing gurus use music and pay big bucks to have fantastic music on their ads. So it is powerful. It’s a powerful behaviour change tool. What people say on stage matters. What they say to their audiences through their songs matters. And we’re in the business of turning it all green.

I want to bring your attention to three particular projects we’ve worked on over the years because I know that this conversation today is all focused on waste and how to switch away from single use and it’s certainly something we’ve been working on for a while. BYO Bottle, Party with the Planet – which I’ve got to give full credit here that the slogan comes from B-Alternative and they are part of an alliance that we’re working with. More on that later – and Sound Country which is the latest project we’re working on.

I’ll start off with BYO Bottle. So it’s a campaign we started up. It was the first one I worked on actually when I joined the org in 2015. And it was tackling the issue of single use plastic water bottles. At that point in 2015 they had become ubiquitous. People thought you couldn’t run an event without a single use plastic water bottle. The big companies like the Pepsis and the Nestles and that had the market cornered and we were very much trying to wind back the clock in some ways. Because when I was a kid growing up I went to many a live music event and there was no such thing as a bottle of water like that. There were reusable bottles of water and there were taps that you drank from directly. So we knew it could be done and we just needed to work on the cultural issue that had arisen.

So we began by recruiting some fantastic acts to talk about their commitment to reusable water bottles. You’ve got there Paul Kelly on the left and Vika and Linda Bull on the right, some icons of the Australian music scene. We promoted their commitment and we started recruiting many more and ended up each plastic free July we’d announce every day of the month of July, so 31 days, we’d announce a different act that had committed. And we’ve now got over 120 artists and really major artists across the country committed to touring without single use plastic water bottles but committed to touring with their reusable water bottle.

They also changed their drinks rider. So it very specifically asks the venue that they play at to not provide them with a slab of single use water bottles as has become the custom. And what we’re finding is more and more venues have started to adopt this permanently and we’re pretty confident that we’ve saved a couple of million water bottles thanks to some major music venues making the switch. So that means five nights or seven nights a week the music that’s being played at those venues no longer has single use water bottles provided back of house or to staff or crew. Groups likes Max Watts, the Corner Hotel and there’s a bunch of others that are doing it.

This is something we don’t often do but we found that we were having trouble convincing some events to move away from water bottles on stage. So we provided a little service where we’ve bought some of these reusable water bottles and provide them as a rentable service. And really hopeful that more and more businesses will get involved in this space. So that’s us at Lost Lands in 2019 with a crew of people providing this. This is one of the rare occasions where we were providing it front of house to patrons, audience members, but generally speaking it’s something that’s provided back of house.

We’ve also worked with over 40 festivals to make a commitment and the BYO Bottle commitment is essentially they’re going to provide some fantastic water refill stations so that people can come and refill their bottles easily and hydrate easily. It’s moving away as I said from that single use model and there are a bunch of events that have proven that it’s totally doable and no one goes thirsty. Happy to talk in more details about that.

So another one of our major campaigns we’ve worked on is Party with the Planet. And so we were running round tables with a bunch of festivals and social enterprises like B-Alternative and other non-profits to talk about the issues of waste and how we can deal with it. And one of the things that kept coming up was the campsite litter. I think B-Alternative touched on it briefly but this idea that a bunch of items that are essentially being treated as single use. And so we sort of worked to get this group of people into a room together which includes representatives from Falls Festival, Splendour in the Grass, Rainbow Serpent, Beyond the Valley, Pitch, and Strawberry Fields and a bunch of others. You might recognise a festival in that mix. A lot of them are youth festivals. They’re all multi-day camping festivals and they were all seeing the same problem no matter whether they were happening in Byron Bay or down south in Victoria. They were encountering this kind of situation.

And I don’t know if many people have visited a multi-day camping festival of that nature, relatively young crowd, but unfortunately it can end up often being campsite Armageddon as you’re seeing here. And if the piece of equipment is cheap enough it can essentially be left at the end of the festival. And I really do see that as a continuum from the single use water bottle. As soon as we’ve packaged up water into a receptacle and said use this for a few minutes and then throw it in the bin and then you can do the same with your plates and cutlery and you can do the same with your cups it’s not that much of a stretch for people to go all right well we’ll do that with our food packaging, we’ll do that with our drinks, now we’ll just start doing that with our camping gear.

So I’ve got a little video here just to demonstrate how bad it is. I don’t know if it will play all right. [0:46:07]. This is a particular festival where it was really hot on the final day and the winds were very high and stuff is getting blown everywhere as you can see.

So our approach to dealing with that was to start off with some new research that hadn’t been done. We conducted about 880 surveys to try and understand what are the key behavioural drivers behind littering at campsites. It was picked up by Triple J amongst others. The key drivers that we found was damaged tents are going to be left behind no matter what quality and usually they are poor quality. If something gets damaged on site it’s going to be dumped. Unfortunately that leads to the second main driver which was social proof. So if people see it being done they’re going to join in and there’s going to be a ripple effect. There are a few other reasons. But I expected urgency to leave the festival to be the number one driver and it was only the number five driver. So by far we had to try and deal with the issue of damaged tents.

There’s Jase off in the corner and Chris Burton from Falls Festival and a bunch of others discussing the problems and trying to come up with solutions. And some of the solutions we piloted before the pandemic hit was a marketing campaign. So we wanted artists to start telling fans how important it was that they took care. I’ll play this one for you.

[START VIDEO PLAYBACK]

§(Music Playing)§

All:

Hey Australia.

Matt Corby:

This summer it doesn’t matter.

All Day:

Where we’re partying.

Stickybuds:

Which festival we’re at.

Lime Cordiale:

Who we’re dancing with.

Montaigne:

Or who we’re dancing to.

Monkey Marc:

We’ve got to do better.

Hilltop Hoods:

Let’s avoid single use plastics.

Cub Sport:

Borrow before buying.

30/70:

Only bring what we need.

Angie McMahon:

And most importantly.

I Know Leopard:

Take it all home.

Dead Letter Circus:

Take our tent home.

The Veronicas:

Take our shit home.

All:

Take it home.

Allara:

Woo-oo.

Holy Holy:

Let’s leave our festival sites looking as pristine as they were before we arrived.

Lisa Mitchell:

Let’s party with the planet.

Mansionair:

And not against it.

Allara:

You’re on Aboriginal land. If you take care of country country will take care of you.

Missy Higgins:

Party with the planet not against it.

[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

Cool. So it’s hard for me to give you really concrete data on the kind of impact that had. A lot of these cultural campaigns are a little bit more difficult to measure. But certainly having people’s favourite artist talk to them directly on festival screens – and this was obviously shared through social media – was one of the strategies we employed. It’s also great to have groups like Bettercup or B-Alternative or others on site reducing the amount of waste that can possibly be created.

And we trialled for the first time – we got a fantastic group called Clunes that they’re like a boutique camping store. We got them on site at Strawberry Fields and Falls Festival to hire out really high quality marquees and tents. So some of the marquees that are being ripped up and blown away that you saw in the previous shot are single stitched and they were offering triple stitched things. And there was a really high deposit that was asked. So it wasn’t actually that costly to pick up that tent or marquee on site but what was costly was the deposit that was put on. So if you don’t bring it back in tip top condition you’re going to have to pay that deposit. And people brought them back. So there were 100 marquees and tents that were brought into this pilot and 99 out of the 100 came back at Strawberry Fields and all 100 came back at Falls but unfortunately Falls was cancelled a couple of days early because of intense winds and heat. So they were a bit worried about a bushfire.

So we didn’t get a heap of data and then obviously the pandemic hit and we haven’t been able to revisit. But this is certainly stuff that we’re really excited about expanding. We’re also in the process of working with Queensland University of Technology on a new app that will help people plan better. Because we did realise that what people bring on site matters. It’s really the same kind of thing and it was being talked about earlier around contamination. What’s there in the first place is going to dictate whether you’ve got an easy job afterwards or a really difficult job. And so if people are bringing junk on site like Kmart tents and the like that are likely to break they’re going to dump them. It’s going to create a real problem. So can we circumvent the problem upfront? That’s what we’re working on.

And project number three. I’m conscious of time. I don’t want to take too much of your time. But we’ve produced a special guide with the help of First Nations Elder Rhoda Roberts who’s been an arts executive for the better part of her adult life and is also a Bundjalung custodian. And she’s given us a wealth of information that we’ve incorporated into a new sustainability resource for musicians. I don’t know how many people on this call are musicians but I think a lot of the learnings are going to be applicable to the events world as well. So we’re launching that this Monday and it will be widely available. It’s going to be a free web resource. This is the graphic that we’ve created with it. This is kind of like the festival scene that we want to see in the future. All reusable. You’ll notice the bins there if you can spot them. It’s like a Where’s Wally. There’s only recycling and compost. If you were going to add a third bin to that it should be one of those pink bins, the reuse system. There’s no landfill because why would we be creating landfill when we can put everything in the other bins.

So look thank you so much for your time and I really look forward to any questions if anyone wants to throw them my way or just get in touch with us and we can answer any questions.

And Thanks Brij and the Sustainability Victoria team for facilitating this conversation. I’m going to stop my sharing.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you Berish. Thank you so much. And yeah I think it doesn’t matter whether it is a small event or a big event with musicians or artists or sports people, there is such key actors in translating these messages and really amplifying them. So thank you so much.

And it’s Q&A time. So thank you audience for watching this and being patient. And some great questions I’m seeing in the Chat. So either you can type in the Chat if you have questions and once we go through some of these first few questions you can also unmute and ask. So the first question from the audience is:

Q: How do you ensure the washing process is also sustainable? Water is one of the very scarce resources so how do you ensure?

Green My Plate?

Will Overman:

So all the dishwashers we use are low water. So they actually have a really low litreage per watt. So it’s actually more water efficient to wash it in the dishwasher than in the sink anyway. So I can send through some more stats on that that we’ve got but at the AO we used very little water over the two week period. So most dishwashers now are really sort of water efficient.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks. Go for it Jase.

Jason Rahilly:

Yeah. That’s a really good call bro. I reckon you nailed that. Just another one as well for people to consider is the amount of water and water embodied energy that goes into single use. So there’s actually a substantial amount of litreage that goes into every single use item whether it be compostable or plastic. So as they mentioned as well the Green My Plate crew are all over it with low water consumption and I think if you compare that to how much embodied water goes into a single use it would be significantly different.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Jason. The next one is:

Q: What if the event does not have accessible kitchen or dishwasher? Do you have a roaming kitchen?

I’ll pose this to Green My Plate first.

Will Overman:

We’re in the same position as the B-Alternative guys. We’re looking at getting sort of a van in the future. But currently we do wash offsite as well. So we can deliver and pick up later depending on the size. So there are other options if you don’t have a kitchen. We have washed in tubs and buckets before but I think B-Alternative would know that that’s not really much fun and it’s pretty tough to do. But yeah there are other ways. So it’s all about tailoring the system to what you need.

Jason Rahilly:

And fortunately I note as well we do have some commercial dishwashers already and we have a marquee set up. And Green My Plate guys we can talk later if you guys want to help out and we can work together on that as well. But we’ve got some commercial dishwashers we currently use to date but we are actually looking to increase that.

James McLennan:

A lot of our events have been in very remote places whether it be Falls Festival or Unify. We do have the facilities to set up. We just need power that’s suitable and in circumstances where we can have grey water outlet or we can use IBC tanks. And often for a festival of sort of a few thousand people we’ll only fill one IBC tank or 1,000 litre tank so it is a tiny amount.

Brij Parmar:

Good. Thank you.

Q: What about serviettes? Do you have sustainable solutions?

Jason Rahilly:

So serviettes. I mean that’s one of those things again it’s hard to sort of cross everything but serviettes are compostable and we make sure they’re compostable, sustainably sourced and we supply that with sustainable cutlery for the events that don’t want to use cutlery as well. But yeah I guess it is one step at a time. I don’t know if the Green My Plate crew want to talk to this at all. We’ve tried reusable serviettes in the past. One it’s really expensive and two it’s not exactly easy to clean and dry really rapidly. And the actual energy in drying is significantly higher than just using a commercial dishwasher. But that’s just our experience anyway.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you. And the next question is:

Q: What about cutlery?

Green My Plate? Jess?

Jess Fleet:

We initially had cutlery. We do have cutlery. Cutlery was a huge learning for us where we decided it’s not as easy as it looks. So we have used it. We do use it for our smaller scale events. So for example at the Noosa Christmas Party they had 600 people and even then that was a huge job for us. We are putting our heads together and trying to figure out the best way forward for cutlery but in the meantime we’re recommending to events to use the compostable cutlery in the meantime or compostable cutlery that can be composted. I think that’s really important.

Brij Parmar:

Jason do you have insights into the cutlery space?

Jason Rahilly:

We’re pretty much the same. We’ve had the same problem. Cutlery is a nightmare. We’ve got wholesale accounts with compostable suppliers so we actually make sure that – again as you said it is actually real compostable not the stuff that says it is and isn’t. So yeah we monitor that and audit that as well. But that’s where I think we’re in the same boat there. It’s a bit of a challenge.

Brij Parmar:

Okay. So just to touch on a few points here. So yes we will be recording this webinar and we’ll be sending it to those who have registered for this and publishing on our website of course. The next question is about bioplastics. It’s also going to be banned. The reason why the bioplastic is – sorry. I’m just reading the question here. So the bioplastic is also going to be banned and one of the reasons is they don’t break down in its natural environment. They need to be processed in a very specialised facility. And of course to grow bioplastics it requires fresh water and land use. So the bioplastics are also in the ban.

Sorry. I’m just going through the questions here.

Q: Do you service small events? Is there a minimum number of attendees that you have as a requirement?

Jess Fleet:

No not for us. So like I said we’ve serviced weddings. We’re about to do a baby shower. It can be as small as you like. The impact – everything makes a difference. So for the smaller events we would rent obviously just the plates. So we create a different kind of rental system. And if you actually go on our website on the Contact Us page there’s a few questions there that we ask, and then we can again tailor our system to best suit your needs.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you. And I did see through the registrants list that there are so many people also joining us from New South Wales and other jurisdictions. So it’s fantastic to have you all here. So the question is:

Q: Are all of you based in Victoria?

So our audience is also based in Lake Macquarie in New South Wales so do you have any recommendations in that area?

Jason Rahilly:

Well we’re based nationally. So we’ve got storage along the east coast as well and all of our stuff is transportable which I’m sure is the same with Green My Plate. So yeah we’ve done everything. We’ve done reusable events all over Australia. The only place we haven’t done a reusable one yet is WA. But a matter of time hey.

Jess Fleet:

We’re similar. Will and I are based in Melbourne and then our third business partner Ryan he’s on the Gold Coast. So yeah our reach currently is Queensland but we obviously can transport our gear across Australia as well. But we’ve also formed partnerships too in the past with plastic free groups. So yeah there is conversations around how we can get our plates across the country.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you. And this is a fantastic question as well is that:

Q: What do you do when you have a push back from the food businesses on the events?

I’ll start with Jason.

Jason Rahilly:

I guess in our experience the biggest thing – I’m sure Green My Plate crew might have noticed this as well – food vendors are very particular about what they want. So getting the range for what they need is not always that easy. So we’ve diversified. We’ve got a fairly detailed range now. And I guess it’s about bringing them along for the ride. So I guess we’re always just trying to encourage them that it’s bigger than if their plate looks a little bit different than what it normally does. They’re normally on board with that. And I guess we show them the financial savings as well and they do tend to – as long as you come to people with a smile they do tend to get on board when they know it’s for the right reasons. That’s why we get Berish in there because he’s always got a really good smile.

Yeah. So we haven’t had too many issues to be honest.

James McLennan:

Similar to Green My Plate as well B-Alternative provide reporting post-event. And when we give that information to those food vendors and say ‘Well you were a part of this and what you’ve achieved from diversion from landfill’ they’re super stoked with that and that’s a pretty easy win for them. Also I guess it does look better on a plate when they’re serving their food and patrons are having a better experience for eating or drinking and they basically come back and say ‘Well that was a no brainer. That was awesome’. So if an event in COVID times has actually gone back from a reusable model to a compostable model we’ve had punter kickback saying ‘Why are you doing packaging again? You progressed pre-COVID and now you’ve gone back’. So event organisers are actually sort of going back and saying ‘Well next year we’ll be doing reusable for sure’.

Jason Rahilly:

And vendor pushback as well. The vendors have pushed back and gone ‘Now our food doesn’t look as good anymore’. So it’s that whole courage of taking that first step isn’t it?

Brij Parmar:

Great. Thanks. And Jess? Do you have any insights into when the vendors are pushing back?

Jess Fleet:

I mean I recall one of our first events we had a vendor push back and I was a bit taken aback by it and I managed to convince her to use our bowls and by the end of it she actually came up to me and was like ‘I’m so sorry. It was awesome. It was great’.

Will Overman:

And it sort of is the same as a lot of punters as well. Once they do it, they feel it, they touch it, they experience it, and then they come back and go ‘This is the best thing ever’. So it’s getting over that initial hump and then it’s fine. And we feel that if we can brief the vendors a lot before we get there, they can touch the plate, they can see it, then it’s going to eliminate a lot of that uneasiness I suppose as well. So the more they know before it the better they are when they get there.

Berish Bilander:

I’m curious from my perspective. I try to make sure that festivals when they’re on board are communicating really clearly to the food vendors before the event. Do you find that’s helpful?

Jess Fleet:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Jason Rahilly:

Yeah. Definitely.

James McLennan:

Not just food vendors. As well there’s also the punter engagement. So if we can send out punter engagement where the punters are actually expecting ‘There’s going to be a reusable model and this is what I need to look for. I need to look for the certain coloured bins,’ or whatever it may be. Any engagement we can have pre-event has a profound impact on the end result.

Jason Rahilly:

And it actually correlates well with what Berish is talking about at the campgrounds. I don’t know if you guys have noticed it with Green My Plate but every reusable event we’ve done when we’ve gone out to do our campground education we reiterate it during the campgrounds as well. And we also see a better behaviour in the campgrounds. It seems to be like you create a reusable model and it does echo through the campgrounds and we’ve seen less waste. So I reckon Berish might be a Green Music Australia sort of survey to come.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Jason. And I think this joy of having – without the guilt of using single use plastics. So yeah that’s great. So we’re going back on cutlery.

Q: Why is cutlery so difficult?

Will Overman:

Have you ever dried 5,000 forks?

I’ll leave it at that. That’s all it is. It’s just time consuming. And they’re small and they get lost. So they’re the two things we’ve found. I don’t know about you guys.

Jason Rahilly:

We’ve also found people throw them in the bin. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that. They’re like this isn’t worth anything so they throw it in the bin. But a plate they won’t.

James McLennan:

I think also when you look at the alternative of being compostable and the one that is certified compostable and actually compostable in Australia’s standards is the bamboo, the non-PLA coated bamboo cutlery, look how easy that is and quick to grow with little water. And actually when it’s composted it’s a regenerative practice going back into the soil for agricultural purposes. So it’s a pretty solid sort of option rather than using the – Jase and I are both in the same boat and that’s from washing the 5,000 forks.

Will Overman:

It’s not much fun.

James McLennan:

Yeah exactly. So it’s a hair keeping campaign for us.

Jess Fleet:

Baby steps as well. We’re trying to educate people and get people on board one thing at a time. Yep.

Brij Parmar:

Great. The next question is:

Q: What kind of lead time do you require for engaging quotes for the events especially when you’re looking at the council as an audience?

James McLennan:

It really depends on the size of the event. Ideally for a larger event we’re looking sort of around five/six months. In saying that in these times where we’ve had events literally ring us up sort of under ten days before the event and say ‘Hey can you do an event for 5,000 people’ and we can pull it together. But look I think waste is often seen as a very last minute thing for events. We want to move them away from that norm and actually go well actually this whole model is not just waste. This is actually a regenerative model. We can implement this and this can be a really centre point to our event. And it’s a really strong marketing tool as well. It’s a great story. If we go back to Queenscliff Music Festival and Sustainability Victoria’s Premier’s Sustainability Award they won that a couple of years ago. So there is a lot of sort of kudos which goes with implementing a model like this and shouldn’t be just a last minute sort of thing.

Will Overman:

I mean operationally it can be a pretty short lead time but the longer lead time you’ve got at the start it’s about that education. So you can get more comms out, you can get to the food vendors. There’s a bit less uneasiness on site. So the longer the better but we have done it in short lead times and it’s still obviously really successful. So just leave yourself enough time to really get the most out of the system.

Brij Parmar:

Great. Thank you. And there’s some great comments in support for this Masterclass. So thank you all so much. If anyone else has a question please this is a great time to unmute and ask.

Berish Bilander:

Can I just jump in Brij and say one thing that I forgot to say in my presentation which is the sound country resource that we’ve developed. It seems like there is a bunch of councils and event people on this call and the education flows in various directions. So if as a resource that’s something you reckon you could share with your roster of artists that are going to be performing who will read it and then hopefully become advocates down the road for all the green work you’re going to do, they’ll be on stage shouting about how great are these reuse systems that are happening out there, it just creates this virtuous cycle. So I’d encourage people once it’s released and launched that they jump on to our website and read it and then get in touch with us because we’re totally up for it being shared with performers or any of the talent.

James McLennan:

I think further to that Berish as well around councils we’re working more and more with councils who are just saying to their events in their areas ‘Hey use a model like this’ and wanting sort of models that they can adapt. So by using Green My Plate, by using B-Alternative in this space for your council events I think is a really – it’s a stance which is powerful but it also ticks a lot of council strategic plan sort of points as well. So it just makes sense.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you. And this is the last question for the day.

Q: Is it a simple framework that exists for implementing a circular event?

Jason Rahilly:

Yeah. I mean from our experience the implementation of the whole thing is – as we said starts at the communication pre-event and then you bring it into the actual – everything pre-event as we talked about before, giving more time. The more time there is the easier it’s going to be on the day. But I think from our experience as well because we are managing the skips, we’re managing everything, for the event it’s a really easy process. It’s like ‘Here you go guys. Make it happen. What do we need’ and then we just basically do the whole thing. One thing that I think Berish’s group is doing really well is also focusing on the stage stuff. So to make sure it’s a clean system. It's kind of like oiling the engine, the environmental engine of course that runs on biodiesel. But if we can get that stage presence we find that that actually takes a lot of the kinks out of the systems. So it is in our experience – and I’m sure Green My Plate would probably share the same view – that it’s actually a really easy circular system to implement but just contact us all early, as early as possible, even today, and so then we can start having those conversations. And it’s really straightforward from there.

Brij Parmar:

Great. Thank you so much. So thank you all so much for taking time today, so today’s Masterclass and your wonderful participation. And special thanks to our presenters. Without you this would not be possible. And I hope you all learnt something today and now feel inspired to make your next event sustainable.

We have a very short survey we would love for you to complete. Your feedback will really help us to plan our future activities. We shall send out the recording of this webinar again and meanwhile please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions and suggestions. Yes we are making some of our resources especially for business focused resources as a part of this program – so we will be sharing Sustainability Victoria’s business engagement link as well. So keep an eye out and soon we’ll be releasing some resources on that.

Again thanks again for participation and hope you all enjoy the rest of your day. So thank you so much.

[End of Transcript]

Café Reuse Masterclass

Presented by:

Moderator:

Brij Parmar, Project Advisor Engagement, Sustainability Victoria

Speakers:

Martin Brooks
Co-founder, Green Caffeen

Chad Buxton
Partnerships Manager, Huskee

Henham Rous
One Good Cup

Bill Bizo
Skip Zero

Patrick Manley
Cercle

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Acknowledgement of Country’, ‘Sustainability Victoria’, ‘I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands upon which I am based today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations, and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. I also pay my respects to the Traditional Custodians of the lands from which you are joining us today’, ‘I acknowledge that we live and work on the lands of the world’s oldest and most sustainable culture’, ‘I acknowledge the deep connection to Earth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their invaluable contributions to our understanding of climate change and environment’]

[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]

Brij Parmar:

Welcome everyone to our reuse solutions for café masterclass by Sustainability Victoria. This is the third masterclass in the single-use plastic series. And it’s fantastic to see so much interest in this space.

I would like to commence today’s session with an acknowledgment of country. I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands upon which I am based today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations, and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. I also pay my respects to the Traditional Custodians of the lands from which you are joining us today. Please feel free to let us know in the chat from where you are joining us today. I acknowledge that we live and work on the lands of the world’s oldest and most sustainable culture. I acknowledge the deep connection to the Earth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their invaluable contributions to our understanding of climate change and the environment.

So today I’ll provide a brief overview of the single-use plastic policy in Victoria and also SV’s business engagement activities and then we will hear from our presenters on how they are implementing reuse systems.

Many of you are aware of the single-use plastic policy. This is a deliverable of the circular economy policy. Regulation has now been made to ban problematic single-use plastic from sale or supply in Victoria from 1^st February 2023. The ban applies to the single-use plastic drinking straws, cutlery, plates, drink stirrers and cotton bud sticks made from conventional, degradable and compostable plastics. So that also includes bioplastics. The ban also applies to food services and drink containers made from expanded polystyrene. There are some exemptions available for medical needs and others. For more information please visit Victoria Government’s website for the plastic ban.

At SV we are running a program to support food serving businesses transition away from single‑use items whilst focusing on reuse and implement reusable solutions. This program includes providing business focused resources, masterclasses like this one and grants as well as localised business engagement activities across Victoria. But today’s session is all about learning how to implement a reuse system at cafes.

We love our coffee in Australia and it’s deeply embedded in our social fabric. Australian coffee is considered as one of the best in the world. I was just having a quick look at one of New York’s restaurants and they were selling Melbourne great lattes. So that says a lot about our quality of our coffee. It has been estimated that Australians consume over 1.6 billion lids and coffee cups per year. Coffee cups are used for a short time and thrown away and they are very difficult to recycle and often end up in landfill. Our data shows that coffee cups are the highest single-use items consumed in Victoria.

So today we’ll hear from the industry on what reuse models are available and our presenters will outline their business models and offerings. And after all the presentations we will have a Q&A. So for the Q&A please use the chat function not the Q&A. Sorry. We have a tech issue there. But just use the chat function. Okay.

So I’ll just introduce our first presenter. So our first presenter is Martin. Martin is a co-founder from Green Caffeen. He was frustrated by the single-use plastic coffee cups and environmental damages they are causing. Green Caffeen started in 2018 on the south coast of New South Wales as a small community-based start-up and has now grown into a country-wide network providing re-usable swap and go coffee cup systems to cafes and coffee lovers. I’ll just share Martin’s slides and Martin welcome.

Martin Brooks:

Good morning. Thanks for having us.

Are you ready for me to go?

Brij Parmar:

Go for it Martin.

Martin Brooks:

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘green caffeen’, ‘swap and go reusable cups’ with a photo of a reusable green coffee cup]

Yeah. Good morning everyone. I’m Martin and this is Sarah and we’re from Green Caffeen.

Unidentified Male:

You’re muted Martin.

Martin Brooks:

Got me now?

Unidentified Male:

We have.

Martin Brooks:

Green Caffeen is Australia’s largest swap and go reusable cup system. We’re on a quest to help cafes and coffee lovers kick the single use disposable cup habit. If you can give me the next slide please Jean.

We provide a reusable cup system that’s easy to use, free for cover lovers, cost-effective for cafes and awesome for the environment. Our aim is to implement a program that addresses the dependency on single-use coffee cups. We offer coffee drinkers an easy entry free way to have access to clean, reusable cups that can be swapped in and out at any participating café. Coffee drinkers simply download the Green Caffeen app, sign up and have access to cups at over 750 cafes throughout each state and territory in Australia. If I can get the next slide.

It's like a library book system for cups, free as long as you bring the cups back. What we don’t want is our cups to end up like most reusables and sit in your cupboard or car not getting used. We give our users 30 days to get their cups scanned back into the system and emails are automatically sent out at 14 days and again at 28 days reminding users to return their cups. In the event your cup hasn’t been returned after 30 days you are charged a one off $12.99 late fee. But there’s a feature in the app that allows you to return an overdue cup which triggers an automatic refund. We run a penalty-based system instead of an upfront deposit-based system. This motivates customers to keep the cups into the system so there’s enough to go around.

To date we have saved over 1.6 million single use coffee cups from entering landfill and had over 38,000 people download the Green Caffeen app. If I can get the next slide Jean.

We have partnered with over 35 councils from around the country who can offer their cafes within their LGA as a sustainable solution to single use coffee cups that will save them money. The next one please.

We’ve partnered with the CSIRO, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the ACT Government. Green Caffeen is also successfully running in Monash University, the University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne. And the next one please Jean.

We are continually striving to improve the reusable takeaway coffee cup experience. Every time coffee is served in a Green Caffeen cup cafes are not forking out the 20 or 30 cents on a single use compostable or biodegradable cup. We’re proud to announce that our cups are designed and made in Australia from a blend of recycled food grade plastic. We also make sure our cups are fully recyclable at the end of their lifespan. Once they reach the end of their waste saving journey out of commission cups will be recycled back into new Green Caffeen cups making ours a completely circular system. Green Caffeen has the ability to track transactions through the app allowing us to capture and report on things like the total number of participating cafes and total number of users. This information can then be broken down into specific LGAs. Data tracking also provides the correlation between the number of cups diverted from landfill, the number of trees saved, bins prevented from reaching landfill and the offset of carbon.

Green Caffeen is at the forefront of changing the takeaway coffee culture in Australia and we look forward to partnering with many councils, corporations and universities in the future. Thank you.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Martin. Thank you so much for your presentation. And our next presenter is Chad from Huskee Cups. With a marine science background Chad gets excited every day to work on this issue that significantly affects the ocean he loves and to protect our planet and his two amazing children and future generations. Chad is excited to see the continued movement and awareness of and efforts on single use plastics. Chad is a partnership manager at Huskee. While new to business he’s not new to the issue of circular economy. Chad has spent the last five years working on this issue from many different directions, from developing and managing community programs like plastic free Noosa, doing trials for councils on soft systems and working with the industry as a restaurant franchise sustainability manager. Chad is committed to delivering systems, behavioural change and collaboration. Welcome Chad. Let me just share your slides.

When you’re ready Chad.

Chad Buxton:

I think you have it backwards. I think that’s the end slide.

There we go. Thank you Brij for that introduction and thank you everyone for attending. If we can go to the next slide.

I think most people are aware of Huskee the cup. And Huskee has a vision. So our vision is to build a global brand that designs beautiful and practical products and enables a transition to a waste free world. We’re a design-led company and just to give you a scope of the business we’re now in over 2,000 stores and distributors globally. We have over 1,000 Huskee swap sites which we will discuss.

We have a team of…

Brij Parmar:

Sorry Chad. I just accidentally muted you. Could you please unmute yourself? So sorry about that.

Chad Buxton:

That’s okay. All right. I’ll start again. I think most people are aware of the Huskee cup and I just want to talk about our vision. So the vision. We’re a design-led company and we aim to build a global brand that designs beautiful and practical products and transition to a waste free world. To give you an example of the scope of the business we are in over 2,000 retailers and stores and cafes globally. We have over 1,000 Huskee swap sites. We have a team of 26 employees. And even in COVID during 2020 to 2022 we grew.

To date we have diverted over 600 tonnes of husk which is a component of our cups which I’ll talk about in a second. Just this year recently I completed an impact report. So if you want this report and understand the scope and the scale of what Huskee does we can provide that to you. Also important for you to know is we got certified as a B corporation in 2021 so we’re very transparent about what we’re doing and how we’re trying to achieve those goals. And in progress right now we’re mapping all of our activities to the UN sustainable development goals. Next slide.

Like I said we’re a design first company creating solutions for our own industry. So the cups themselves are designed using the waste biproduct of the coffee industry or the coffee husk. And we use that same design philosophy when designing our systems and programs. The Huskee swap system is an opt in model and I’ll discuss in detail how that’s different from some of the other models in how we use that behaviour and how that matches consumer behaviour. The Huskee swap system is designed for cafes first and foremost. And we also have the Huskee loop system. So we’ll talk about that in detail as well. And that is a program to help us deliver on our circular economy outcomes. We’re excited about some new products. And basically the Huskee loop system is a voluntary program so that we can take responsibility for our end of life products. Next slide.

Now the Huskee swap system if you haven’t seen it is it’s a buy in swap system. And that’s important for behaviour change. It matches the human behaviour of that old adage of saying you value what you pay for. And so in this case we buy a cup upfront and that gets consumers to commit to a program. It’s a low cost cup. So it’s currently sitting in the market as a mid-range option, around $15 to $20. Importantly there’s no ongoing costs and in some ways you can consider this model an infinite ownership model. As long as you have a cup and you haven’t lost it you can continually swap this cup for life. So I like to call it infinite ownership.

Businesses soon will be facing the choice of single use plastic bans. They’ll have a choice of one replacing their disposable cups they’re currently using with more expensive or compostable cups and lids which have known disposal option issues, or they can encourage reusables and implement reusable systems that save them money and save the planet. The Huskee swap system has three core revenue streams for business which is quite different from other models. One you can retail the cups and they sell very well. As you can see we’re a large company and growing. The swap allows ongoing and significant savings for businesses. So if you’re not buying disposable cups 20/30 cents per cup is saved and that’s an ongoing savings if you can encourage people to swap.

There’s also that positive interaction that you have with your customers and you attract and retain new conscious consumers. The app to support the swap system is completely optional. Credit cards and information are not required. You don’t have to download the app to participate in the swap however the app gives you additional benefits like storing your cup or borrowing a cup if you forgot it, all human behaviours that we know. It’s a truly scalable and sustainable solution for Huskee, for the café and for them. Okay. Next slide.

So how is an opt in system different from other systems that you’ll hear today? First of all the cup itself is a desirable cup. It’s known. It’s trusted in the industry. And that’s due to our transparency and engagement. The user experience is simple. So there’s no apps necessary for initial participation. Simply you need to buy a cup once and you can participate infinitely. The system is designed specifically for the industry with workflows in mind. So stacking your cups. They’re stackable. They sit on top of your machine. And there’s no complex transactions. They provide a cup and you give them a cup and a reusable cup.

There’s no ongoing costs like subscription models, deposit systems or app requirements. And these are all significant behaviour change hurdles of getting people to use a swap system. A full merchandise pack and collateral are provided for every café when they join swap to assist in communication and set up of the swap system. We also have a dedicated staff member simply to support the swap system. We deliver a choice to cafes and consumers. The cups themselves with their saucers are even suitable for dine in as well as takeaway. The cups have multiple sizes so you’re not limited to a particular size and they have universal lids. There’s no obligation to return the cup either. So if you want to use the cup simply as a keep cup they’re free to do that. They don’t need to do anything else which is also good behaviour.

The store and borrow functions that are present on the swap app are completely optional but they’re encouraged and they help the cafes themselves to encourage repeat behaviour and savings. Swap can also be run independent at a café or a network. So you don’t need a network for a café to do swap. Each café can do it individually but obviously a network helps. The community have more options. We’re also developing new features. The app is now developed in-house and the new features will link rewards to cafes and behaviour change not necessarily just buying a cup of coffee.

How we support partnerships. We’ve had over 29 key partnerships with universities, councils and corporate. Some of them that you can see are Canva, Macquarie University, Google and Microsoft. So we have significant partnerships in place. We have a full design team to support any café or partnership for activation plans and collateral. And we can provide reports and metrics that allow our partners to report on their impacts. Okay. Next slide.

One of the things I’m really excited about is the circular economy aspect of Huskee. What we’re trying to do is show that end of life recovery is not theoretical. At Huskee it’s deliverable. So just this month we’ve launched the Huskee dog bowl which is really popular and it creates that link. So the Huskee dog bowl is actually made from 100% reclaimed Huskee cups. There’s no additional virgin or other materials in these products. They’re literally old cups that have been repurposed into a new product. We also just recently launched the Huskee renew range which looks and feels like glass but is a plastic product that has 50% recycled content in it. So again we’re taking a problem of the industry and incorporating that into our products.

There’s a few more things that we’re developing that are in the works and I’m really excited about those. But we just wanted to show you that we are delivering on circular economy which is pretty exciting.

Next slide.

That’s it. Thanks for listening to me. And if you want any further conversations you can click in the links on the slides provided or reach out at Partnership@huskee.co.

[Virtual of slide with text saying ‘Huskee’, ‘Thanks for listening’, ‘Partnership@huskee.co’, ‘Hello@huskee.co’]

Brij Parmar:

Thank you Chad. Thanks for your presentation. And next presentation is from One Good Cup.

So Henham will be presenting from One Good Cup. Henham has a background in energy efficiency, working in warehousing and logistics in the UK. Henham saw the packaging that spurred him into action into sustainability. Initially he was trying to find a solution to hamper waste biproducts and develop reusable coffee cups. He has been focusing on convenience to lower the barrier to entry and uptake of the reusable cups. Welcome Henham.

Henham Rous:

Hi. Good morning all. Thank you very much for having me. And I can only say what a great honour it is to be involved with this presentation. Also being aware obviously of the amazing work that Huskee Cup do as well as Green Caffeen. So yeah really privileged to be involved. I just wanted to just start with a little bit about myself. Very quickly as said involved in the energy industry, energy efficiency industry. And I came about this concept having worked a lot in warehouse and logistics and seeing all the waste and rubbish being used and sort of shook my head. And when I came back to Australia late 2018 some friends of mine were involved in the hemp industry and they were actually looking for an opportunity to reuse some of their waste product as part of the hemp food processing industry. So that led me down a rabbit path similar to Huskee Cup to see whether or not there was a way of combining a waste biproduct. And as I started going down a rabbit hole we decided that something around the cup space would be potentially a useful application.

And further investigation in the industry led me to believe that actually the answer was not sort of getting a better single use cup but actually something a bit more permanent and then to try and find a way of working on that habit change. So that led me to the idea which then I found out other people had been doing is that sort of concept of reuse and trying to make life easier for people. So if we go to the next slide.

Really simply similar to Huskee Cup we’ve actually put a price on our membership model on the basis that if people pay for things they value it more. It’s free for the cafes to join. There’s also an incentive for the cafes to get involved. And just around that habit change we have included the option of getting two cups at a time. So very much we know what it’s like. I’m guilty as anyone. You don’t always have your cup on you or you don’t always remember to bring your cup so by having that access to that second cup we’ve really noticed a lot more uptake in people’s willingness to change their habits.

The cup itself I guess is something we’re really proud of. I have to confess a lot of cups were harmed in the choosing of the cup we decided to go with. So it’s a stainless steel cup. We chose it as our second iteration of cups. We chose it on the basis of its durability, it’s obvious ability to be cleaned easily given its stainless steel nature which has obviously been quite an important topic of conversation over the last two years during COVID, and additionally it’s a dual wall insulated, thermally insulated cup. So we’ve noticed it’s been really popular for those companies that offer things like Skip where they’re pre-ordering coffees that actually it stays hot for a very long time. So that’s been a real benefit to the cup itself.

That is sort of it just in terms of the membership. Really, really simple. I thought I’d keep this nice and succinct and obviously more than happy to answer questions later on. And then finally the final slide. Trying to keep it down to the four minutes. With myself, I’m the person you’ll have the direct relationship with. As I said this was my own baby. As mentioned in the first slide it was my own capital that has gone into this project so it’s the little guy having a swing. And because of our size it allows us a lot of flexibility with regards to partnership. So we’ve done a subsidised partnership with a local school down in Geelong where the cost of the membership is actually subsidised by the college for their staff members. So lots of opportunities there to partnership, potentially even co-branding opportunities. And yeah obviously I could go on a lot more but I think this will give you a very quick and short snap of where we’re at and what we might be able to provide the individual cafes.

So thank you.

Brij Parmar:

No worries. Thank you so much Henham for your presentation and I’m sure people will have lots of questions about coffee cups. So moving on to our next presenter. Give me just a second.

So our next presenter is Bill from Skip Zero. Bill is a CEO at Skip and has been leading Skip from day one for almost eight years. Bill aims to remove friction between takeaway and sustainability to make the experience easy through technology. Bill understands the impact of single use packaging in Australia and is committed to drive change towards waste reduction. Welcome Bill.

Bill Bizo:

Thank you. Thanks for having me. So for those of you that don’t know what Skip is, as was said we’ve been around for about seven and a half, almost eight years. We’re a pre-order, pay, collect application. We’re an Australian owned and operated business, head office here in Melbourne. Skip’s currently got over a million users that use Skip daily with over 2,500 cafes across Australia. They range from small businesses, so small cafes, larger cafes and then we work with partners such as Qantas. We started off offering a pre-order, pay, collect application. We then moved into catering, table ordering, self-managed delivery. And we thought that there’s a part that we can play to ensure that we make sustainability easy for everyone. So if you can move to the next slide.

The solution for us was Skip Zero. So what we want to try and do is that pre-order, pay, collect process, how do we make it a smooth process when it comes to sustainability and removing single use cups. So the whole thing behind it is we want zero waste, zero wait, zero guilt, reduce, reuse and reward. Next slide if possible.

To set a venue up. So we provide venues with a setup which includes retail stock. So they receive as part of the initial setup 30 cups which includes bases and lids. It also includes 12 bases that they use as pass stock, so sitting on the countertop, six warmer lids which I like to call – I don’t know if you can see this but it’s a little round food safe coaster that sits on top where merchants can actually write the customer’s name if the customer’s not there waiting for it. And we also provide them with an NFC reader. So the way the process works is the consumer purchases and joins Skip Zero where they will receive a base and a lid. From there they place their order. The merchant receives the order. They grab a cup from their pass stock. They assign the cup to the consumer, make that order. The customer comes in, provides them with their – can you hear me? Yep. I think someone’s taking a call. The customer provides them with a dirty cup which goes into a commercial dishwasher and from there the customer walks away with a fresh cup without having to…

Is someone making a call?

Jean:

I’ve just muted them. Thanks Bill.

Bill Bizo:

No worries. So that’s how the process works. It’s simple for a business. It’s simple for a consumer. If we can move to the next slide I’ll talk to you a bit about the cup. So we did quite a bit of – the one after. Yep. Perfect. So we did quite a bit of research. We looked at almost 100 different cups. The one that we ended up landing on is produced here in Melbourne by a company called Uppercup. The reason why we went with this particular cup in itself it goes through over 1,400 commercial washes. The cup itself is double walled which enables us to put an NFC chip down the bottom. So again the merchant assigns that cup to the consumer so straight away the customer knows which cup they’ve got. It also enables them to keep a tally of how many cups they’ve saved and also the merchants as well.

As I mentioned designed and created and made here in Australia. It’s designed with baristas. So the creamer is maintained, it’s non-porous, non-smell, 100% durable and 100% recyclable at end of life. And we’ve had really, really good feedback based off the consumer feedback and also the merchants as far as easability of washing and maintaining the cups. If we move to the next slide.

As I said for a business we set them up with cups both for retail and also to enable the swap. We provide them with the NFC reader and we also provide them with marketing collateral to assist them with promoting Skip Zero at their location. Next slide.

I don’t know if this is possible but can we click on the last link which is Skip Zero Venue Video? Hopefully everyone can hear it and hopefully it allows it to go through. If not we can share it.

Brij Parmar:

Give me just a second. I’ll just share that particular window.

Ben Bizo:

And I guess while that’s coming up as well we’re excited about this product. I think from a pre‑order, pay, collect app it would play a massive part of changing consumer behaviour. We’re starting with cups and we’re expanding into other products as well based off merchant feedback and consumer feedback as well. I’ll let you watch this.

There’s no sound.

Brij Parmar:

Sorry about that.

Ben Bizo:

That’s all right. We can send through the link and you can watch it at your own pace. Yeah. That’s Skip Zero which is part of Skip. Thank you again for listening and thanks for having me.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you Bill for your presentation. And moving on to our last presentation from Cercle.

Patrick is a founder and CEO of the Cercle, the reusable cup system designed to take away the hassle from using reusable cups in a busy CBD environment. Patrick started Cercle after his frustration with remembering his reusable cup grew to a point it could no longer be ignored. And today Cercle lives in over five buildings in Sydney with an imminent expansion due in Victoria before the end of the year. Welcome Patrick.

Patrick Manley:

Awesome. Thank you so much. Brij are you able to share my screen?

Brij Parmar:

Sure. Give me just a second. I’ll just make you a presenter.

Patrick Manley:

Awesome. Thank you very much. And I’ll keep this actually short because I know I’m standing between everyone’s next meeting and/or coffee.

Brij Parmar:

Go for it Patrick.

Patrick Manley:

That’s great. Thank you. All right.

All right. So Cercle is reuse without the hassle. And I want to explain to you in this next sort of one minute pitch around why we care about reuse without hassle. So this is me. This is in the basement of a big office building in Sydney. We collected two days of cups. There’s about 1,600 disposable cups. This is despite 70% of people having access to a reusable cup, either their own keep cup or a swap scheme, something like that. You still get a monumental amount of disposable cups in busy office buildings.

If we look at those cups you see that 70% of them travel 50 metres. And I think this is a really, really key fact that drove why we designed Cercle in the way that it’s been designed.

So our Cercle cups are built by Returnr. The cup’s beautiful because it’s double stainless steel walled and it keeps the coffee warmer for much longer. It’s really good in cafes, it’s stackable, it dries quick, you’ve got lines inside it so baristas know how to measure the coffee. It’s really been designed for the café environment. And this picture of the café you see up here, this is the café inside the EY building which pre-November last year was full of disposable cups and we turned the entire café over to reusable cups. We’ve now got two other cafes from our other two customers that have completely transitioned across from disposable cups to reusable cups. So we’re able to transition entire cafes over to a reusable system.

We’ve also built this which is a drop pod. We built a drop pod because we need a really, really efficient way of collecting cups in offices. Our system is built around you getting your cup from the café, drinking it wherever you like and then dropping it in the office. And we try to replicate the experience you have with a disposable cup except replacing and improving it with a reusable cup. And Cercle’s role in that is then to collect, wash and return. So we’re currently one of the only reuse systems in Australia that has the capability to collect, wash and return the cups back to cafes.

And this enables us to have massive adoption. In the building that used to have over 1,000 disposable cups dropped in the bin per day it now gets a handful and we’ve just got hundreds of these reusable cups being used.

This is our trajectory of growth. We started only about a year and a half ago and we’ve now got three buildings and we’re rocketing up. We’re washing thousands of reusable cups a day at the moment in the city.

So what an activation looks like. We get lots of cups at the cafes. We get the drop pods up in the office. We put messaging into the lobby. We’re very focused on this building where we’ve got a high density of people drinking a lot of coffee where Cercle works really well.

And people love it. Cercle’s free to use. So you as a user can go into a café and instead of getting a disposable cup you just simply get a Cercle cup. There’s no upfront payment, there’s no deposit, there’s no subscription and there’s no app.

The building loves it because they get a massive waste saving and the café really likes the cup because the coffee tastes better.

Cool. So that’s it from me. If you’ve got any questions or contact hit me up. Really keen to chat. Yeah. Like I said I just think the reality of the amount of the disposable cups that we actually need to transition across to reusable cups is so huge we actually need systems that are capable of doing the full collection, wash and return otherwise we’re simply not going to get to scale. And I also don’t think that we can ask cafes to wash hundreds of reusable cups into the thousands. We need proper infrastructure and that’s the part of the infrastructure we’re building and we’re going to bring it down to Melbourne in the new year. Cool. That’s it from me. Thank you very much.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Contact & Questions’, ‘Patrick Manley’, ‘Founder & CEO’, ‘patrick@cercle.com.au’, ‘0421702338’]

Brij Parmar:

No worries. Thank you so much Patrick for the presentation. And this is just Q&A so everyone if you can either unmute and just ask questions or feel free to type in the chat and ask that way as well. But there was one question which I saw earlier especially to I think some of the organisations who are based in New South Wales.

Q: How many products or services are available in Victoria?

I know Patrick is due to come in soon but what about others?

Henham Rous:

So yeah I’ll go first. Yes. We’re actually based in Victoria so we’ve started in Geelong and then sort of expanded from there. So yeah. Very much Victoria’s our calling, first port of call.

Brij Parmar:

Yep. Green Caffeen? Go for it Martin.

Martin Brooks:

Yeah. We’ve got 750 cafes throughout each state and territory in Australia. We have a café finder built into our app so you can easily open that up and see which café’s rocking Green Caffeen. Next week we’re actually down in Melbourne as we’ve just partnered with Mornington Peninsula Shire Council. So we’re hoping to get a heap of cafes on board in there too. We partnered with Bendigo Council. So we’ve got quite a big footprint in Bendigo. If you look on the café finder you can see which cafes it’s available at.

Brij Parmar:

Sure. Anyone else would like a take or I can move on to the next question.

Chad Buxton:

Yeah. I can add to that as well. I think currently we have about 540 cafes in Australia, over 1,000 globally. And again we have a café finder on our app so you can just jump on to the app and have a look at where we are. But any other questions about how we can service you just reach out. Partnership@huskee.co.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks. So one other question is how council can partner with this process. Could anyone just give a very, very quick brief answer to this especially looking at the council partnerships?

Patrick Manley:

I can talk about cities.

Brij Parmar:

Yep. Or shire.

Martin Brooks:

Yeah. So we partner with councils around Australia. It enables them to offer their local cafes in their LGA a sustainable solution to single use coffee cups. And it’s great for us because it enables them to offer the cafes a sustainable product that will actually save them money by using Green Caffeen or using a reusable. So like I mentioned every time a reusable cup gets used they’re saving 20 to 30 cents on a single use cup.

Bill Bizo:

We’re also starting to partner up with some councils as well and I guess the difference with our particular product it keeps tally of how many cups, whether it’s a venue’s saved or from a council perspective. They can keep a council tally of exactly how many cups they’ve saved as well.

Because each time you use the cup obviously it’s got that NFC reader which then tallies the total. We’re finding the same with universities as well and hospitals and office buildings as well.

Brij Parmar:

Cool. Thank you.

Q: Are there any concerns of traces of different milk that might be allergen for some people?

I’ll pose this question to Patrick.

Patrick Manley:

Yeah. I just typed a really quick reply to that. So we’ve washed personally 45,000 cups and our network has washed over 75,000 [0:40:02]. The average commercial dishwasher is sufficient to sanitise the cups. They need to get over 65 degrees. In New South Wales we tend to wash them at 80. It does a much better job. We find that we do need to pre-clean. Washing is actually a huge burden that we cannot escape from the fact of how hard washing reusable cups are. And I don’t believe it delivers a net cost saving to a lot of cafes because actually if you add up the time it takes them to wash a couple of hundred reusable cups it’s going to take them a couple of hours using their current facility. So I do believe we get to efficiencies of scale with bigger systems. But yes washing cups is hard work. We find that for our cups we need to give them a pre-rinse with a mechanical washer and then put them through the commercial washer to sanitise them. And in terms of traces of milk we’ve never had any problem with that. We do have a problem with turmeric. People who have turmeric lattes. You probably find this with the Huskee and Green Caffeen cups. Turmeric can be a nightmare for staining cups.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Patrick. This is a question for Huskee.

Q: So what happens with the Huskee cups at the end of life? Are they composted product of husk and plastic?

Chad Buxton:

Yeah. So the Huskee cup product is a composite and like I said we have the Huskee loop program. So cafes and businesses, even corporates, they have a collection system where it gets all shipped back to us. We take that and we process it in-house in Sydney. It gets ground down into product and then that product is remoulded into the Huskee dog bowls. So a lot of the claims of 100% recyclable, this isn’t kerbside recyclable. Most of these cups are not. As a response for that is that we’re making sure that we actually collect them and do something with them.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Chad. And this is a question for all of you but I’ll just ask in general.

Q: So do the council buy all the cups or the café buys it?

I’m sure we have outlined in the presentation and also please feel free to reach out to each organisation. But do the council buy all the cups? Does the council purchase cups for the local cafes?

Chad Buxton:

I can talk to my partnership model. So our partnership model depends on the scope of what the council wants to do. We don’t actually recommend that the council buys all the cups and provides a free program. The problem with a free program is that there’s no incentive for the cafes necessarily to implement it and they haven’t invested into the process. So there’s a constant ongoing need to re-educate and reinvest. The Huskee program, you can subsidise it. So you help them get their initial float. But the Huskee partnership program makes sure that they have ongoing revenue from cup sales which is a motivator and also as they go you’re just helping them to start the process and we will help the councils with all the engagement materials and uptake initially. But then it starts to run itself.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Chad. This is a question for Bill.

Q: Are the Skip Zero cups recyclable at the end of life given the NFC reader or can they be returned to Skip Zero for recycling?

Bill Bizo:

Yeah. So the good thing about having the chip in there we know exactly when the cup’s required at end of life. They’re 100% recyclable. So what happens is they pull apart, the chip comes out and then 100% crushed and repurposed, so for things like coffee trays and other plastic products. So we work quite closely with Uppercup and they facilitate that for us.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Bill. And this is a question for Patrick. Sorry. Just had moved somewhere.

Q: Have you guys done any formal research or have you received any informal feedback as to why your system works and what is the incentives?

Patrick Manley:

Yeah. Great question. So just recapping on the presentation we specifically focus on office buildings and busy office buildings, cafes just outside, café inside. We’ve been running for over a year in one of our main buildings. We’ve had 45,000 uses. We’ve had a few hundred cups go missing over that time including the ones currently on my desk. That’s resulted in a 99.6% return rate. And when we’ve looked at that data and compared it to other systems with published data around the world it actually is higher than – if you look on Club Zero which is a return system with an app much like some of the ones we heard on the call today over in the UK, our return rate is currently higher than that with no tech. So we’re tapping into a social pressure within office buildings that’s really, really key. When we surveyed the users of these buildings they gave us some really interesting clues to why they didn’t walk out of the building with the cup. Number one some of the people said they thought it was tracked. Number two they said ‘I don’t need to take it because I know it’s going to be here tomorrow’. And we just generally believe you make it as easy as it is to put a reusable cup back ie in our drop box then it’s easy for people just to put it back than to walk out of the building with it. So quite simply it’s just all social and it works.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Patrick. And there’s a question that I have been actually waiting for.

Q: Any COVID concerns especially with the BYO cups?

Henham any thoughts?

Henham Rous:

Certainly from my perspective it’s taken a long time for people to switch back. And I think with that what I’ve noticed it requires a lot of patience and gentle persuasion that I don’t think you can sort of brow beat people into changing their habits and I don’t think the whole guilt trip is going to sort of work the same way it did. I think everyone’s had more pressing priorities with regards to mental health situations, employment opportunities and the like. So I think it’s a challenging time to get back into it. I guess what I am encouraged by is sort of the enquiries that I have had and when I have been sort of seeing people out using it that there’s still – what I’m trying to say is there’s a slowly changing move back but I can’t speak for everyone else. But certainly from my experience it’s a slow build back up into getting people re-engaged.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Henham. So yeah thanks everyone for your questions. If you have any further questions please feel free to unmute and ask. But we have developed some of the communication posters and hope these posters will help you to communicate and encourage the uptake of reuse. I’ll just post that link in the chat.

So if you’re a council we do have a special council’s pack on which you can put a council logo, or a university, feel free to put a university logo on it. And they are designed for different settings such as bubble tea or cafes etcetera. I’ll just share my slides again.

So these posters are ready to download and print and good to go. And now our plastics team leader Jean will outline the circular economy’s reuse pilots grant. This is the next round. Welcome Jean.

Jean:

Hi everyone and thank you for those quick snapshots from all the different businesses and all the different offers that you’re providing. It’s really good. And some of the questions not all organisations got answers to. We’ll follow up with the organisations and put those on our website and hopefully support those who are interested in these different reuse models.

So today I am very excited to provide details on round two of the Circular Economy Reuse Pilots Fund. So some of you may have heard about or even applied for round one of the fund which closed in July and we provided five organisations with funding to implement reuse systems that replace and reduce single use plastics that are to be banned from the 1^st of Feb next year. The successful organisations are published on our website so we’ll send the link with our post-event email if you’re interested to know more about those projects.

But this morning I want to provide an overview of the fund. So once I do feel free to ask questions or recommend you can have a look at the guidelines and send through any questions to our Grants Enquiries email once you’ve had a further read.

So this is a negotiated grant. So the link is not publicly available on the SV website like other SV grant programs. So we send the link directly to organisations we think may be interested in applying. So post this event we’ll be sending the link to the application and the grant guidelines to all registered attendees for today’s masterclass and if you do know any organisations you think may be interested in the fund we’re very happy for you to pass on that link to that business.

So round two of the grants are for piloting reusable solutions. So we’re focusing on takeaway single use coffee cups and takeaway food containers as well as the items included in the single use plastic ban that Brij mentioned earlier. The grants are between $15,000 and $50,000 and applicants must contribute at least $1 for every $4 funded. So as an example if you request a $40,000 grant from SV you must contribute $10,000. And the co-contributions can be either financial, so cash, or in-kind or a mix of both.

So organisations that are eligible to apply for the fund include a business that provides a reasonable service, for example the businesses you’ve heard from today, businesses that provide a takeaway food service such as restaurants or cafes, businesses that own a premise where small to medium food retailers operate such as office building managers or owners, or organisations that provide economic support to food serving businesses such as local governments, Chamber of Commerce or Traders Association.

The fund is designed to increase the uptake of reuse solutions and collect data that informs the feasibility for future intervention for reuse. So we really want to understand what works, what needs further support from an SV perspective as well as others who are kind of in the market for providing reasonable solutions. So this program is looking to support street precincts with restaurants, cafes, bars and takeaway food shops as well as food hall settings such as shopping centres, hospitals, office buildings or permanent markets. Basically anywhere where hospitality businesses are using single use plastics to serve their customers.

And funding is available for infrastructure that enables the reuse system such as purchasing reusable cups or food containers as well as for signage, project promotion and data collection. So applicants need to provide details on how the reuse system will be operational ongoing. So these are pilots but we obviously want to see them continue into the future. So we’re really keen for applicants to provide that detail on how they see these systems being managed ongoing. So applications open as of today so we’ll send through the information. And quite a tight timeframe to submit but applications close midnight on Monday the 31^st of October. So we’re aiming to notify successful applicants in December and then projects would need to report on your pilot results by the 3^rd of July next year.

So that is the spiel of the Reuse Pilots Fund. We’ll definitely send more information. We’re very excited about it and we are available to talk about your project proposal. So you can send an enquiry which we’ll send the details through after this event. But you can send an email to Grants Enquiries and then Brij or I can follow up and have a chat about your project proposal as well. Yes. So that is our Reuse Pilots Fund. If anyone has any questions now or you can ask them at a later point.

I’ll hand it back to you Brij.

Brij Parmar:

No worries. Thank you guys. Any questions? Going once, going twice. Right. So there is a question.

Q: Does infrastructure include washing facilities?

Jean:

Yes. So we do have inclusion of commercial dishwashers. That kind of infrastructure that enables washing is included.

Brij Parmar:

Q: Will there be only five offered for this time round as well?

Jean:

Pending on number of applications and the request for funding. So to be confirmed basically when the applications are received.

Brij Parmar:

Right.

Thank you all so much for your questions. If you have any more questions please feel free to send it to us. Our email address is plastics@sustainability.vic.gov.au. And also we would love for you to fill out a survey. It’s a very quick survey. It should take less than three minutes. I’ll just pop a link in the chat here. And this survey really helps us to organise more future masterclasses. And that would be all. So thank you all so much. Thank you all to the presenters especially for taking time out and presenting the amazing information and insights into the coffee cups. And thank you for all the attendees for your questions and your participation and hope you all have a wonderful day. Thanks all. Bye bye.

Patrick Manley:

Thank you.

Bill Bizo:

Thank you.

Henham Rous:

Thank you very much.

Chad Buxton:

Thank you.

[Closing visual of slide with text saying ‘Thank you’, ‘f @SustainVic’, ‘T @SustainVic’, ‘in Sustainability Victoria’, ‘Sustainability Victoria’, ‘Victoria State Government’]

[End of Transcript]

Single-Use Plastic Ban for Councils

Thursday, 1 December 2022

Presented by:

moderator:

Brij Parmar

Project Advisor, SV

Speakers:

Jean Young
Team Leader, SV

Mark Chicoine
Program Lead, DELWP

Nicole Muir
Team Leader Communications Strategy, SV

Nicole Gschwind
Resource Recovery Advisor

Marianne Ching
Waste Avoidance Officer

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Welcome to the Single-use plastic ban for council webinar’]

[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker presenting in turn via video, with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen]

Brij Parmar:

All right. Welcome all. Great to see you. Welcome to the Single-Use Plastic or also known as SUP Ban for Councils webinar. And we are so thrilled to see you all again. Some of you may have attended our previous sessions, especially the masterclass session. Usually at the end of the masterclass we send out a survey and there is a [0:00:26] team that do the council [0:00:28]. So you asked and we delivered.

So my name is Brij Parmar and I’m from Sustainability Victoria. And today’s session is all about Victoria’s single-use plastic ban and also we have put together some of the comms material for you that you can use to communicate with your stakeholders and your cohort.

So I would like to commence today’s session with an acknowledgment of the country. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands upon which I’m based today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and pay my respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. I acknowledge the deep connection to earth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their invaluable contributions to our understanding of climate change and the environment. And I also pay my respect to the traditional custodians of the lands from which you are joining us today. And according to the Wurundjeri calendar of seven seasons we are transitioning into Gunyang season today.

So today’s agenda. First we have DELWP’s presentation, so the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. We have Program Lead Mark Chicoine presenting from DELWP. Then we have SV. No bias there. But we’ll be presenting. I’m also joined by our Single-Use Plastic Team Leader Jean Young and Strategy Communication Advisor Nicole Muir. And then we’ll be hearing from two esteemed colleagues from interstate, Nicole Gshwind from the City of Adelaide and Marianne Ching from the Australian Capital Territory, Canberra.

Just a couple of housekeeping. We will make all the slides available for you so don’t worry about screenshots and things. We will make this available so you can just sit back and relax. This webinar is recorded and we will publish it on our website. So if you have to leave early or if the internet drops out or anything don’t worry. We have you covered. And it will be great if you could put your questions in the chat during the presentation. I have allocated 15 minutes towards the end for Q&A.

So without any further delay I welcome Program Lead Mark Chicoine from DELWP. Welcome Mark.

Mark Chicoine:

Thanks very much Brij. My share button is not lighting up on my screen here.

Brij Parmar:

Give me a second. See if it lights up now.

Mark Chicoine:

It does indeed.

I’m getting there.

Probably good there are still people joining.

There. Can everyone see that?

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘What does the single-use plastic ban mean for Victorian councils?’, ‘Mark Chicoine’, ‘1 December 2022’, ‘Victoria State Government’]

Brij Parmar:

Yep. Thank you Mark.

Mark Chicoine:

Excellent. Good. So good morning everyone. I’m Mark Chicoine from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning and I’m here to share some information with you about the single-use plastic items ban which is upcoming on the 1^st of February and what it means for councils and your local communities. I’m going to zip through this fairly quickly because I’ve got a fair bit to cover.

Firstly a bit of context. The single-use plastic items ban is part of the Victorian Government’s circular economy policy Recycling Victoria, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with, may have even read. In a circular economy products are designed to be repaired and reused and then recycled at the end of their life. This means that materials are used more efficiently and we reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill and importantly reduce the amount of waste that ends up in our environment and causes harm.

Now Victoria’s transition to a circular economy is being guided by four goals spanning the lifecycle of materials and those are up on the top right hand corner of that slide, which are make, use, recycle and manage. Now each goal’s designed to maximise value and minimise waste in ways that are safe for all Victorians.

So the first goal, design to last, repair and recycle is about generating less waste in businesses through innovation using recycled materials and products and consider the impacts across product lifecycles and to support business to explore new circular economy business models.

The second goal is using products to create more value which helps people make smart purchasing decisions and extends the life of products, supports the reuse economy, repair goods where possible, reduce plastic pollution and phase out problematic single-use plastic items which is where our regulations and upcoming ban come in.

The third goal is about recycling more resources, reforming kerbside collections which I know councils are acutely aware of, to generate more value from waste, improve the separation of recyclable materials, plan for and boost investment and recycling infrastructure, embed the waste hierarchy in the management of materials and support the development of appropriate waste to energy facilities which are starting to come about.

The fourth goal is about reducing harm from waste and that’s essentially about protecting communities from hazardous waste and high risk sites. Now the Government has set four ambitious targets across the bottom of the slide to measure our progress against those goals. Firstly there’s currently too much waste going to landfill. By 2030 we want to divert 80% of waste from landfill with an interim target of 72% by 2025. We’re also importantly wanting to avoid creating waste in the first place and that’s about cutting the total waste generation by 15% per capita by 2030. Thirdly we want to capture a larger volume of food and organic material and have organic waste as entering landfill by 2030. And the Government will provide – and this is starting to happen in councils across the state with access to separate food and waste organics recovery service – the red lidded bins, the green bins, or alternatively a local composting by 2030.

And this is why we’re taking action on single-use plastics. Plastic pollution harms health, harms our wildlife and the environment and we’ve all seen it in our parks, waterways and beaches. We know that single-use plastics can be a problem. They make up about a third of Victoria’s litter causing harm to the environment and they’re also very costly to clean up and difficult to recycle. They’re a poor use of resources. They’re often used only for a few minutes and generate significant waste that is not recyclable. They’re also difficult and economically unviable to recycle but they often end up in the recycling stream contaminating the recycling. Single-use plastics can often be avoided or replaced with reusable products and with less litter. The risk to human health and the environment can also be reduced.

So from 1 Feb these are the problematic single-use plastic items in the ban for sale and supply across Victoria. So we’re talking about single-use plastic drinking straws, cutlery, plates, drink stirrers and cotton bud sticks. And this includes all types of plastic. So conventional, degradable, compostable, such as bioplastics, as these are all harmful to the environment when littered. The ban also applies to EPS food service items and drink containers, so your foamy clamshells and cups.

The ban applies to all businesses and organisations including all levels of Government, so state and councils. Importantly plastic items will need to be reusable to be sold or supplied in Victoria. This means they will need to be manufactured to be used on multiple occasions and come with a warranty or some sort of similar declaration that they will last for at least one year. This will ensure that any items are durable and can be used on an ongoing basis, so truly reusable.

The regulations that ban the items were approved back in September and will be incorporated into the Environment Protection Regulations as Division 2 of Part 5.5 which follows the bag ban provisions for all of you regulation nerds.

Now all forms of plastic are harmful when littered which is why the ban includes conventional as well as compostable biodegradable, and it includes items with composting certifications. So for councils the most likely places that these items would pop up – and I’m sure you’ve seen them around your buildings and facilities – are council town halls and civic centres, particularly kitchens and lunch areas, leisure centres and swimming facilities that have food service or vending, community centres and halls, child care or aged care support services as well, council festivals and markets and sporting pavilions.

Cotton bud sticks may also be used in some council support services including environmental public health units. So councils purchasing these items in the future even if you don’t think that they contain plastics you should ask the supplier to confirm in writing that they’re not even partly made of plastic, because the definition also includes partly made.

Certainly it’s best to avoid single-use plastic items completely where possible. Consider if you really need to keep supplying or providing these single use plastic items at all. Preference reusables such as metal, ceramic or bamboo. You can also use reusable plastic items that have been manufactured to be used on multiple occasions and should only be used in instances where you would ordinarily use them repeatedly. So organisations using reusable items may consider having a system in place such as a closed loop system where items are owned by a business or organisation and they’re collected for washing and reuse, or an open loop system where items are owned and reused by an individual or a combination of the two. So for example plastic items provided by takeaway shops, food courts or food trucks should be accompanied by a readily accessible facility for customers to return the items for washing and reuse. Some music festivals I’ve noticed are starting to do that now.

If a business or organisation does not collect items for washing and reuse it’s certainly likely that these items are only going to be used once and alternative items should be used in these instances. And for single-use alternatives if you do need disposable alternatives consider responsibly sourced paper, wood or bamboo.

The regulations were finalised based on feedback, some of which we received from councils during public consultation which was back in April and May of this year.

And the ban’s been designed in a way that balances the needs of Victorians with environmental outcomes. So the regulations provide some limited exemptions where single-use plastic items can continue to be used. So not all of these will impact councils but nonetheless I’ll touch on them because they’ll be useful for you to know. Cutlery will be exempt in certain settings where they’re needed to prevent physical harm or injury. So the regulations provide an exemption for cutlery used or intended to be used by a mental health service provider or premises or in correctional, police or youth justice facilities for the purposes of preventing any physical injury or harm. Now this exemption has been provided as cutlery as you could imagine from alternative materials such as metal and some reusable items can pose greater security and safety concerns in some settings.

Straws for people who require them due to disability or for medical reasons. This exemption is a recognition that single-use plastic drinking straws offer specific characteristics that are not offered by other materials. They’re soft, they’re bendable, flexible and they can be positioned. Now these are some of the most important characteristics that people who rely on these items need to eat and drink. And it’s not a preference for many individuals. It’s a necessity to have these drinking straws.

So what might this mean for councils? Councils will still be able to purchase single-use plastic drinking straws and provide them to those in the community who need them particularly regional councils may consider selling straws to those in the community who genuinely need them, as many retailers we’ve seen already such as supermarkets will no longer choose to sell single‑use plastic drinking straws. These straws must not be freely available in public areas, staffrooms or to persons who do not require them. Straws made from any alternative materials can be provided in these instances.

For cotton bud sticks the regulations provide an exemption for single-use plastic cotton bud sticks to be used in testing carried out for scientific, medical or for forensic or law enforcement purposes. This is due to the stable nature of the plastic stems and the hygienic benefits that plastic provides.

Plastic allows a sample to be collected, transported or tested without becoming contaminated or deteriorating in any way. This may be relevant for councils if single-use plastic cotton bud sticks are being used in environmental public health units, enforcement units for example, or in other areas and can continue to be used for testing purposes if they’re currently used. Alternative items obviously will need to be identified if they’re being used in other areas of councils. The exemption allows cotton bud sticks to continue to be used for PCR and rapid antigen tests. We often get that question.

Paper and cardboard plates. There’s an exemption for these until 1 November 2024. This aligns with the New South Wales ban as well. As well as any items that are pre-packaged by a machine on to food or drink packaging, they’re exempt until 1 January 2026. So things like the little plastic straws that are attached to juice boxes. This will allow the industry time to shift to alternative materials and processes.

Finally I’d like to touch on how you can prepare for the ban from 1 February. Certainly use up any stocks of these items that you have kicking around councils and have a discussion with suppliers or whoever does procurement or purchasing at your council to find suitable alternatives that meet your needs. And again a reminder that compostable and bioplastic items are also going to be banned so don’t entertain buying those at this stage. Understand if you need to use banned items for the exempt circumstances or if there are other materials that you can use instead.

Our team of course will be around to help with any queries or concerns that you might have. You can get in touch with us through the sup.policy@delwp email. There’s a heap of resources available on our website. The final regulations are there. There are business resources. There’s a fact sheet. There’s a guide. There’s translated resources that we hopefully will have up this week, signage. Free information sessions are being run by the National Retail Association every Friday at 11:00am for businesses. Certainly promote those through your economic development teams, to local traders associations and business groups.

NRA is also doing face to face engagement which I know a few councils have contacted us enquiring about that engagement. They’ve done upwards of over 1,700 businesses at this stage and are continuing to roll that out until the ban comes into place.

Thank you very much. That’s all I have.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Thank you!’, ‘Sup.policy@delwp.vic.gov.au’, ‘Victoria State Government’]

Brij Parmar:

Thank you Mark. Thank you for your wonderful presentation. And just speeding to the next one, our next one is us and we are going to talk about some of the reuse and some of the pilots. So let me just get my screen up.

So at SV re-use has been always a big part of our program. We have invested in pilots, so the Circular Economy Reuse Pilots Fund, to support Victorian food service businesses to implement waste avoidance and reuse options and through this pilot we are collecting data that will inform other businesses on the feasibility of the reuse in different hospitality settings. We are keen to see what kind of reuse solutions are scalable in the hospitality sector. So round one we focused on the banned items, to also focus this on coffee cups and takeaway containers. So I can see in the chat there’s a bit of a discussion going on there. Currently we are finalising the round two, so we will publish some more details when we have finalised the contracts.

Next up is Jean, our Single-Use Plastic Team Lead Jean, and Jean is going to highlight some of her business engagement activities.

Jean Young:

Thanks Brij and good morning everyone. So I am just going to provide a bit of an overview of some of the data that we have been collecting through our face to face business engagement program. So we’ve engaged three contractors to deliver engagement across three Victorian regions and basically this involves walking into hospitality businesses to tell them about the single-use plastic ban and collecting data through a survey.

So engagements commenced from the 22^nd of August and will be complete in the next week and our target was 3,250 businesses across 31 LGAs. Next slide Brij. So so far we’ve exceeded our target and engaged 3,265 businesses and seven out of ten are willing to participate in the survey and talk to our contractors on the ground. We found the highest use of to be banned SUPs is cutlery and straws which correlates with our Victorian single-use plastic consumption data.

So in terms of awareness we’ve found that 40% of businesses had not heard about the single‑use plastic ban before so early engagement has been really important. But despite the high lack of awareness of the ban about 70% of businesses are already taking action that will prepare them for the ban. So they’re already not using the single-use plastic items or they have stopped ordering SUPs etcetera. Next slide.

So as Brij mentioned increasing reuse across the hospitality industry is a key focus for SV and we want to understand current uptake and what the barriers are for SMEs who may not accept reusables. So we found 40% of businesses have no barriers to accepting reusables which is great. For 20% of businesses their customers just don’t bring their own items. And concerns for COVID safety and not being clear on the health regulations for accepting reusables was rated low as a barrier which is also good news. We’ve also found that around almost 60% of those surveyed are interested to learn more about reusable options for their business.

So here’s the breakdown of the number of businesses engaged per local government area across the three regions that our contractors have been in. So it’s quite small but it kind of gives you an overview of the number of businesses per local government area.

So for us we’ve engaged the LOTE Agency who specialise in culturally and linguistically diverse engagement and they are targeting business precincts and local government areas with a higher percentage of CALD business owners and staff across metro Melbourne. So they’ve employed 17 business engagement officers that speak over 18 languages to engage directly with SMEs. So I was recently out with the LOTE team in Glen Waverley where out of the 11 businesses that we visited two of the engagements were in Mandarin and five in Cantonese. So it was great to see I guess on the ground that that approach has been effective in communicating the SUP ban. Of the SMEs surveyed so far Mandarin is the highest preferred language followed by Vietnamese and Cantonese.

And our data says that local councils – which I’m sure won’t come as a surprise to you – that local councils are the greatest source of information for hospitality businesses finding information that impacts them. So I guess that’s why today is a really important session and fantastic to see so much interest from LGAs joining today. And then finally in terms of concerns about the ban we found about 50% of businesses surveyed aren’t concerned. The greatest concern is additional costs for packaging which supports our focus of trying to encourage uptake of reusables and waste avoidance where possible.

So that is a snapshot. We’re more than happy to talk with any local governments who want further insights into some of our data. But that’s it from me and I will hand it back to Brij. Thank you.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you Jean. So to help businesses transition to waste avoidance and implement reuse we have published a few case studies. These case studies capture a range of perspectives and give easy to follow tips for businesses to be more sustainable. Through engagement we found that many businesses do want to be more sustainable and need a bit more information on how they can take some action without doing a massive system change. And hopefully your examples and these case studies really guide them to be more sustainable.

We are going to publish more of these. Currently we have nine and we are also looking for more recommendations. So if you have any recommendations or know any food serving businesses that are doing an awesome job at avoiding waste or implementing reuse, promoting bring back containers, please let us know in the chat or through email and we’ll definitely reach out to them.

As Jean mentioned earlier in the reuse data slide many businesses are willing to accept customer bringing their own containers or BYO containers and would like to learn more about it. So we have designed some communication material, especially the posters. I will go a bit more into the details. We have council special assets which I’ll just take you through in a bit. And these are in design files so you can download them and edit them and put your council logo on it.

Just before I go into it just quickly touching on why businesses should accept reusables. I think it’s really important to kind of communicate to the business community because it normalises this whole concept of circular economy. We all have some reusable containers at home and most of us can easily have our next takeaway meals completely plastic free. So for business it’s very cost effective. Many businesses are implementing reusable containers with their own branding on it such as coffee cups or takeaway containers or using Returnr and other schemes.

So because of this many businesses have reported that the customer loyalty has increased because they share the same environmental values. It reduces the waste. You often see the bins outside the takeaway food shop completely full of packaging material so this will definitely help businesses reduce waste. And they can have free advertising. There are many plastic free movements such as Plastic Free Places, BYO Containers, Responsible Café and many more. I could just name a few. I know some of the councils have run some fantastic plastic free places programs. So for businesses often these are free to sign up and they can have free marketing.

And I’ll just show you where these resources are on our website. So let me just stop sharing and I’ll take you through our website.

So if you go to our Home page, reducing the waste in a business and single-use plastic ban, this is where all of our resources and our program findings sit. What it means for a business, ready for the ban. These are the success stories, the case studies and the communication resources are here.

These posters, business posters are here. They are designed for businesses to use. So they can just simply download and use them. We have designed for context special, so they are special for food and offices and café, bubble tea, especially the juice and the smoothies. We welcome reusables. This is really the pièce de resistance of all the posters. It has been really, really popular. We have given out hundreds of these.

If you just go a step back here we have all the additional languages here. So at the top it says what it says in English but we have we welcome reusables in total in 11 languages. And here you can download all the council posters and council assets. So these are [0:28:12] and you can get the communication team to edit them and share in your municipality.

If you just go at the top and here this is one of our current assets and that link will lead you to all of our assets on SV. So that includes detox your home, state-wide campaign of SABI which is small act big impact. That campaign especially focuses on household and we have heaps of assets. So you can take your time to go down this rabbit hole.

And next one is Nicole Muir and Nicole is going to explain our communication pack. So I’ll just share my slide and give me just a moment. And welcome Nicole.

Nicole Muir:

Thanks Brij. Yeah. So my name’s Nicole Muir and I’m from the Strategic Communications Team here at Sustainability Victoria. So Brij is sharing the – well we’ve developed a simple and hopefully easy to use communications pack for your council to share this campaign with your local businesses and community who will be affected by the single-use plastics ban. We know that businesses will turn to council for leadership as an authority on this issue so it’s really important for information about the ban to be on your channels and communication platforms around the organisation.

So the first step – well we’ll go through this a little bit if you like, so what’s in the pack. There’s just some basic information here. We highlight the target audience, there’s sample text that you can use on your website or email marketing or social media channels. So the first step is to engage your communications team to let them know about the ban and about this campaign. They’ll be best placed to roll out the campaign. They’ll know how to tailor this pack and the information for all your different council platforms and to talk to the relevant audiences.

So the pack includes basic details about the ban, the audience as I said, the sample text. It links to those materials that Brij was just sharing on screen before that are on our website so you can easily download all the posters. There’s also masterclass videos that can be embedded on your website to help educate hospitality businesses in the area. You can cut and paste the case study information, anything. The comms team will know how to roll it out.

We’ve also got an example of a social media post there just to demonstrate how your council can showcase businesses in your area already doing amazing things. So they can really just tailor it so that it’s relevant content for your local community.

So yeah, look that’s it. Anyone from your comms team or anyone here today is welcome to contact me if you have any problems or want to know how to use the pack but Brij will make it available. Thank you.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you Nicole. And just this comms pack is live now so if you go in to our assets library, if you go into the information toolkit, that’s where you can download the comms pack. It’s both in PDF form and Word file.

Okay. So that’s really all from us. Sorry. I’m just trying to manage a few screens here which are a moving part. So next we have Nicole Gschwind from the City of Adelaide. So Nicole Gschwind is a Resource Recovery Advisor within the Circular Economy Team at the City of Adelaide. In her current role she supports local businesses and data investigations as part of City of Adelaide’s Resource Recovery Strategy and Action Plan. This strategy provides an eight tier framework to really define the concept of waste, recover more resources and build circular economy to make the City of Adelaide the first city in Australia to achieve zero avoidable waste to landfill. She has Master of Environment degree with a specialisation in waste management from the University of Melbourne and Bachelor of Science degree focusing on soil and water science from University of Illinois at Urbanan-Champaign. I don’t know how to say it Nicole sorry. Welcome Nicole.

Nicole Gschwind:

[Virtual visual of slide with text saying ‘Circular Economy’, ‘At the City of Adelaide’, ‘Nicole Gschwind’, ‘Resource Recovery Advisory’, ‘Circular Economy Team’]

Great. Thanks for the intro and hello everyone. As mentioned my name is Nicole Gschwind. I’m a Resource Recovery Advisor with the City of Adelaide. I am super excited to be here today and share the journey of our circular economy team.

First and foremost I would like to acknowledge that the City of Adelaide is located on the traditional country of the Kaurna people and we pay respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land. We also extend that respect to visitors of other Aboriginal language groups and other First Nations.

So I’d like to provide some context of who we are at the City of Adelaide. Our vision is to be the first city in Australia to achieve zero avoidable waste to landfill. Our new Resource Recovery Strategy and Action Plan provides an eight year framework to redefine the concept of waste, recover more resources and build a circular economy team within our city. So our team focuses on supporting our five target areas which includes businesses – that’s my role – multi-unit dwellings, internal operations, public space and residents in our community.

Within each target area we have five priority items. So that includes eliminating food waste, improving education and outreach, fostering technology, prioritising resource recovery and advocating for change in the waste space.

So here are some examples of the educational support programs we have going on at council. As you can see we have a heavy focus on diverting food waste from landfill across our team. So that includes ensuring that our multi-unit dwellings also known as MUDs have access to food organic bins and educational signage, connecting businesses with green organic services and promoting our free kitchen caddy and liner program. We also just launched two reuse and recycling hubs within the City of Adelaide and this was completed within a partnership with a local university to design and actually construct the hub itself. So this was a beautiful opportunity for our community to recycle and sort items that should be recycled but don’t belong in the recycling bin.

We even have some fun here at City of Adelaide. That top left photo I believe that’s on your left is a picture taken at our trash talking trivia night which was a huge success.

So I would like to provide some high level context around the policy of single-use plastics here in South Australia. And just to note that the policy was created by the State Government over at Green Industries SA. Our role at council aims to help businesses and community with the transition and beyond. So in September 2020 the South Australian Government passed the Waste Avoidance Act which was a really positive step towards avoiding waste. So from March 2021 the Act prohibited the sale, supply and distribution of drinking straws, cutlery and beverage stirrers. From March 2022 the regs expanded to include expanded polystyrene cups, bowls, plates, clamshell containers and oxo-degradable plastic products.

To valuate the next steps a discussion paper was released called Turning the Tide. And I absolutely love this title page. So this work aimed to collect feedback from the community and businesses about future bans. So based on this work this is what we’re looking like in South Australia for the next two years. So from 2023 we will be banning single-use plastic bowls, plates, some cotton buds and pizza savers. 2024 is going to be our big year. So we’re looking at plastic produce bags, confetti, balloon sticks, ties, bread tags, beverage containers including coffee cups and food containers.

So to build on this momentum we successfully applied for a grant through Green Industries SA to pilot a multi-bin system along our beautiful Rundle mall in the City of Adelaide. So here at council we’re all about having a holistic approach to improving resource recovery. So this approach includes a multi-bin system, a business incentive program and a shopping arcade of waste investigation. So for the bins this was aimed to encourage visitors to stop and sort their food waste, their certified compostable products and their cans and bottles. There was a lot of internal and external collaboration regarding the actual design of the bins. We wanted to focus on reducing the level of contamination in the green and yellow bins as much as possible. So we included behavioural signs and behavioural observations to ensure that the design of the bins themselves reduced contamination as much as possible.

To complement the bins we invited eligible cafés along Rundle mall to improve their waste diversion through our business incentive program. So this program had two parts. The first part was a $1,200 one off voucher to support the switch from a single-use product to a certified compostable product. And just to note that certified compostable products are allowed to go in the green organics bin in South Australia. So the $1,200 value was estimated to be around one month’s worth of a given product’s supply. We also teamed up with Plastic Free SA. They’re a not for profit organisation. They provide free guidance and tips on not only understanding what certified compostable products are and what they mean but also beyond that and talking about reusable systems, mug libraries, bringing your own containers. So their partnership was really critical in having this program take off.

The second component of the program was a $400 rebate if a café acquired a private waste contractor to include a food organics bin collection service. So how that works is I’m a café, I have contacted a private waste contractor, I said I would like to have green organic bin services. I have two months of invoices. You can apply for that rebate at that given time and then after another two months you can apply again.

The third component of the business support was in arcade/shopping centre and waste investigation. So this was a really heavy stakeholder project and included six arcades. And we really wanted to dive into the current waste systems and opportunities to reduce waste and recycle more.

So key takeaways about the bin pilot. It was more than just the bin. This project highlighted the importance of a multi-team collaboration including local and state governments, systems thinking, business engagement, activation, educational programs, communication plans. All of these components were critical to the success of the pilot. Other observations so far. The ten cent container rail has been heavily used. So I’m not sure if you saw in the previous photo we have a rail or an insert where you can just place your ten cent containers. So that system has been heavily used and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback about that. We’ve also received a lot of positive feedback through our social media with 500 plus interactions. We’ve also invited schools to do an educational workshop right on Rundle mall to learn more about the importance of recycling and sorting your food waste. So there’s a beautiful platform for these educational services and we’re really, really happy about those outcomes.

For the business incentive program this was really a boots on the ground operation. Just a lot of one on one engagement with the cafés and learning more about them and learning more about how we could help them. So we had a high participation in local, independent cafés with a 73% uptake of eligible cafés within this definition. Has not been as easy with national and international chains because they simply don’t have the power to make those purchasing decisions. So that really highlighted the importance of the Federal and State agencies to kind of play a role in this part.

The partnership with Plastic Free SA was key. As I mentioned before they not only provide excellent information on the importance of a certified compostable product but they also want to extend beyond that and talk about reusable systems and mug libraries and BYO. So it was a great opportunity to provide that one on one engagement with the cafés.

For the food organics rebate this program was not as popular. There is still that big hurdle about bin space. So I’ve noticed that it’s really important to talk about how you can reduce your landfill bin’s either size or frequency of pick up if you do add a green organics bin. And then that conversation is all about dollars and cents. So they could potentially save money if they reduce their landfill bin size because they simply don’t need it as much since all the food waste is going into the green bin.

For me other key takeaways is I was so excited to see that these cafés understand the marketing value of sustainable practices. I was expecting more single-use plastics out there but a lot of these cafés, especially the local, independent cafés, had two maybe three products that were single-use plastics. So they understand the value of sustainable practices. They understand that their customers want those products. So this program was really good just at getting them over the line of eliminating any single-use products from their circulation. There was some confusion about the lids. So they assumed that the lids were certified compostable because they purchased the cups and bowls that were. So again it was a beautiful opportunity to provide that education.

For the shopping centres we had some really good observations in that space. So half of the shopping arcades are already using a back of house food organics collection system which is excellent. We’ve also noted an 83% utilisation of a ten cent container recycling system in these locations. So based on these observations we started to identify future incentive programs aimed at reducing food waste, waste reduction incentives through reusables and those types of programs and also training opportunities for the arcades themselves.

And that’s my team and that’s all I have.

Brij Parmar:

Nicole thank you so much for that. It’s a great program. And just in interest of time speeding along to the next one. The ACT Government is developing a circular economy that responds to the concerns about resource scarcity, pollution of the environment and the economic limits of the patterns of production and consumption. So from this action packed team we have Marianne Ching. Marianne Ching is a Waste Avoidance Officer within the ACT’s No Waste Team. The ACT Government is unique to other states and territories as it has responsibility for state/territory function as well as functioning as a local government.

Marianne has a Bachelor degree in marketing and in her current role she works on education side of projects such as the single-use plastic ban and the circular economy. So welcome Marianne.

Marianne Ching:

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Single-use plastics ban’, ‘Single-use plastics in the ACT’, ‘Everyday climate choices’, ‘ACT Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Your waste sorted’, ‘act.gov.au/single-use-plastics’]

Thanks Brij and thanks everyone for your presentations. It’s super inspiring to hear all the great initiatives happening around the country. I just wanted to give some context on what the ACT is doing I guess in the lead up to Victoria’s ban starting next year.

So in terms of single use plastics in the ACT we’ve started our ban since 2021. And so you can see there on the screen those are the items that we have banned already within the ACT. So there’s quite an overlap with what Victoria is going to ban from February next year except plates and bowls are in our next tranche. So we’re looking to ban those probably from 2023.

Within the Act the structure I guess of how we propose items to be banned to the community is to give the community about 12 months’ notice and open consultation to get the community feedback and industry feedback about the proposed items. After the consultation closes and we get the feedback our Cabinet decides which items to go ahead with and they’re confirmed in the new year. And then we start an education campaign to our businesses and other stakeholders about a couple of months before the ban starts. So I guess it is quite interesting in the ACT because we are a smaller jurisdiction, that we are a state and local council together, so we’re both responsible for creating the legislation as well as educating the community and the public about those bans.

In terms of communication strategies the biggest way of kind of raising awareness about the bans is through digital comms, printed comms or direct comms. So in terms of digital comms as we know a lot of people still use social media to get a lot of their news, so our websites, our social media platforms and sending emails to people are pretty effective. In terms of printed comms that are handed out to businesses and community groups around the ACT poster and information flyers are available. And in terms of direct comms similar to the Victoria Government we’ve contracted the National Retail Association to run online sessions and to provide face to face store visits to businesses across the ACT in conjunction with some of our other teams within the ACT to spread the word and the messaging about the ban.

So we found that the more awareness there is the more questions we get about the ban. So I’ll kind of get into some of our challenges and key learnings that we’ve had since the two years that we’ve enacted the ban.

So I guess the first challenge that we found is that businesses are continuing to use some banned items after the ban date. And there’s various reasons why that might happen. Sometimes it could be a lack of awareness or people wanted to use up excess stock or people being unclear about what the requirements are. So in terms of our learnings and recommendations to other councils and states enacting the ban giving businesses as much early notice as possible and increasing awareness, especially when the ban is proposed, just so that it’s on people’s radars. And as we probably all know a lot of businesses have a lot of stock so giving people enough time to switch away from products is really important.

As other people have mentioned earlier in the presentations today there is a lot of confusion about green washing bioplastic compostable products and what the best alternatives are in terms of what can be used and what should be swapped away from with plastics. Particularly for us bioplastics tends to be one that’s quite confusing as they’re often sold I suppose as better alternatives because they are compostable. But we know probably from working in the industry that bioplastics aren’t any better for the environment unless there’s an industrial composting facility that can process them. So Victoria I noticed is also banning bioplastics so it’s definitely one to be aware of when promoting the bans coming out to the Victorian customers and businesses.

We also found that when people or businesses hear the words single-use plastics they worry that every single-use plastic item that they might stock is banned. So providing really clear and concise information about which items are specifically banned in the upcoming ban is really important. So providing good fact sheets, providing good information on the websites, that’s really important. And we have utilised the National Retail Association’s hotline as a good resource as well because as Government we’re unable to recommend specific products which is a common question that people often want. What can I swap away to instead of using a single‑use plastic item? So by using the hotline which is not a Government-led resource it’s a way that businesses can get a really clear answer about which specific items and products they are able to use.

And as Sustainability Victoria touched on before there are a lot of business owners that are not from an English speaking background so it is really important to provide those different resources and have those options. So it’s really great to see Victoria’s already on that.

I also wanted to quickly touch on plastic free events. So it’s an initiative within the ACT that goes beyond the single-use plastics ban and encourages events to ban items beyond those that are mandated in the territory. And one of the reasons we wanted to focus on plastic free events was because we obviously are aware that there are a lot of single-use plastics items that are used at events and there are some easy swap outs in terms of those. So bowls, plates and takeaway containers particularly at events tend to be an easy item that events can swap away from. Takeaway containers, it depends on the event of course. So you can see in those pictures there that things like fish and chips or burgers, salads, it’s easy to use a cardboard-based alternative. But obviously things like curries and things like that, if they have that at the events, can be more challenging.

And we have found in the last year and a half since we’ve been doing the plastic free events program that some challenging items continue to be plastic cups because there aren’t that many alternatives and water bottles as well. Often for event safety reasons access to water is really important so banning those can be a challenge.

So for our learnings as well from plastic free events I suppose the other side of banning items is to consider where the alternative items should go in the waste stream. So providing really clear bin signage at events. We found that providing examples of the specific items above the bins, so if you have this takeaway container or this paper bowl, which bin it should go in and literally sticking that example of that item above the bin so people are clear about which bin to use can be really helpful. And particularly for us as well working with event organisers to give their vendors a lot of heads up is really important.

I think it should be getting easier in the next few years as all the states sort of get in line with the similar items to be banned but we have found that vendors coming from interstate where the rules are different can be quite a challenge.

So just in terms of next steps for single-use plastics within the ACT. As I briefly mentioned earlier we are looking at a number of new items for 1 July banning next year including plastic takeaway containers, plastic plates and bowls and heavyweight boutique shopping bags. So we’re currently doing consultation which will close in a few weeks’ time. In terms of next steps for plastic free events we’re looking at how we can do more reusables as we know that’s kind of the best way to be more sustainable. And so I know Brij previously had run awesome workshops about some sustainable alternative companies. So Reusey, Green My Plate and B-Alternative can be some great Aussie companies that are doing reusable works at events.

And yes we are looking at a circular economy within the ACT. So looking at how single-use plastics can fit into our circular economy strategy which will be released next year.

Thanks. Back to you Brij.

[Visual of slide with text saying ‘Single-use plastics ban’, ‘Thank you’, ‘www.act.gov.au/single-use-plastics’, ‘Email singleuseplastics@act.gov.au’, ‘Call Access Canberra on 13 22 81’]

Brij Parmar:

Marianne thank you so much. Sorry guys. We’re actually running a bit close to time. We are happy to stay five minutes extra if that’s okay with everyone just to go through some quick questions. And where do we start? There’s so many questions in the chat. But if I could get DELWP to kind of explain a bit more on – especially there is a lot of questions around leftover items.

Mark Chicoine:

Sure Brij. I’m happy to jump in. As in excess stock?

Brij Parmar:

Yep. Thank you. So could you please explain what businesses can do especially when the ban is in effect and then they have excess stock left over? Thanks Mark.

Mark Chicoine:

Yeah. Certainly. I mean the message is certainly to use up what you have now and not hang on to it. Don’t order any new banned items.

I guess it depends on the quantity as well. If you have only a few items probably the best option is to simply dispose of them in general waste. If you’ve got boxes of it contact your supplier and see if they’ll take them back. Some suppliers will take them back on exchange depending on the items. Contact a local recycler and see if they will take it. If you have heaps of material some of the local recyclers we’ve spoken to will take these items back. Ultimately if you discover you’re just plain stuck and don’t know what to do with it get in touch with us, send us an email at the sup.policy email address or give us a call and we’ll do what we can to assist.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks Mark. And also just a question from the chat.

Q: What happens with the mass produce that are SUP items? Are they just going to landfill?

And there’s also a question about the allowed items, so can they go in the FOGO bin, especially when the ban is in place and [0:56:17], especially the bamboo and those items? Which bin they should go in?

Mark Chicoine:

I know with our council – many councils are different, depending on what they accept – I know we’re going to standardise bins and standardise items for the bins ultimately. But at the moment it really depends on your council collection service. You probably should speak with your waste people to see what can and can’t go into your local bins. That’s probably the best advice at this stage.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you. And could you please quickly touch on the EPS containers and expanded polystyrene? Especially there was a bit of confusion around the food and the meat packaging, or the EPS container that is for the food, like a fish and chip shop sort of thing. So which one is banned, which one is not banned?

Mark Chicoine:

Yeah. Sure. The list of items in the regulations are the only items that are banned at this stage. So if it’s EPS, your typical clamshell type food container or cup, that is banned. Other types of food containers at this stage are not banned. So it’s strictly up the line what the items are. That’s banned. Everything else is not at this stage.

Brij Parmar:

For ice-cream lovers the gelato container is not banned.

Mark Chicoine:

Correct.

Brij Parmar:

Nicole could you please elaborate on mug library?

If that’s what you say.

Nicole Gschwind:

So this is something that Plastic Free SA promotes. So when you’re out and about and your forget your coffee cup or your coffee mug some cafés here they just have either a shelf or a box that you can just grab the mug, fill up your coffee, take it back to your office, and then when you go back to the café you just drop off the mug. So it’s essentially just like a library. So when you’re out and about and you forget your mug there will be a mug there and then once you come back you return it. So they’ve had some success with those. Plastic Free SA is trying to find a way to actually add data to those processes as well. But it’s just little things like that. Because people are busy in the city. You have meetings, you have everything. Sometimes you forget your cup. So it just makes it easier just in case you do forget your cup. You can simply just pick one up, pick up your mug at the café and just return it when you come back.

I always love the saying that coffee tastes better in a mug so we try and encourage that as much as possible.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you. And we have actually published one of the case studies and they were very passionate because they said that the best way to enjoy the coffee is from the unlidded cup because you get to smell and enjoy the coffee.

Nicole Gschwind:

Absolutely.

Brij Parmar:

And Nicole did you find much contamination with the container scheme?

Nicole Gschwind:

So we’ve had the ten cent container scheme in South Australia since the 70s so that process has been refined over time. With the bins in the public space we have folks that remove the ten cent bins, any bin, to get the ten cent refund from the system. So in order to make it easier that’s why we’re looking at that rail. So instead of people having to dive into bins they simply just need to take it from that side insert. And I love the saying that Adelaide is designed for life but it’s also designed for everyone. So we want to make it as easy as possible to get those materials sorted and out of landfill.

Brij Parmar:

Yep. And next question is for Marianne and Nicole both. You both are heavily engaged with excellent stakeholders and there’s a question in the chat.

Q: How do you acquire email addresses? Do you send out an email or do people subscribe to you through newsletter or something?

So Marianne could you please shed a bit more light and then followed by Nicole?

Marianne Ching:

Yep. Definitely I think getting emails can be a challenge. Probably the best way we found with engagement is obviously face to face. So I think in terms of getting email addresses from a wider group of stakeholders trying to find a community group or a community leader or community newsletter that might be able to share the message for you is also a great way. If you can’t get the direct newsletters, shopping centres for example could disperse the message out to their retailers. Otherwise engaging face to face to get those contact details can also be a good way to do that.

Nicole Gschwind:

And just to build on that, so for the Rundle mall precinct that pilot was very targeted. So it was any café that potentially a customer would go to that café and dispose of that cup within our bin system. So we have precinct leaders. They have an existing relationship with all cafés in that area. So first and foremost we were communicating with them to get the word out to the targeted cafés. But at the end of the day I guess it was a real boots on the ground operation. Café owners are one of the busiest people on the planet. I completely respect their time. So I noticed that just kind of getting this as efficient as possible – they didn’t have time to respond to emails as much. It was more effective for me to go there, tell them what the message was, tell them what they’re eligible for and then kind of do it in a very order of operations and efficient manner. So that’s what we’ve experienced along Rundle mall.

Brij Parmar:

Thank you Nicole. And again I’m truly very, very grateful for both of you especially joining interstate and thank you to DELWP for joining today. As usual we have our survey and it will take three minutes to fill out the survey so please do fill out. It’s really, really valuable to us. It really helps us to make this program better.

And if you have any questions please feel free to reach out to us at Sustainability Victoria. And sorry we couldn’t go through all questions but I have access to the chat so I will put them in some format and we will try to answer the best we can.

So that’s all from me and thank you all so much. I hope you all have a lovely day. Sorry Jean any last words?

Jean Young:

Just a quick one which I think Mark should be able to answer is just around how long the hotline will be available.

Mark Chicoine:

That’s a good question. Off the top of my head I don’t recall. It’s well past the ban. It’s a couple of months past the ban so it will be up and going until at least I think March/April.

Brij Parmar:

Thanks. And sorry really the last one.

Q: Is there any support for regional Victoria especially the north east by NRA?

Is NRA hitting the ground there?

Mark Chicoine:

Yes. They’ve already been up through Wodonga and that area up in the north east. Obviously with the floods and so forth they’ve had some challenges having to turn back, driving down roads and so forth. And the last thing some businesses want to talk about is their single-use plastic forks when their business is flooded. So there have been some challenges but they have been to a number of areas throughout the north east.

Brij Parmar:

Cool. Thank you Mark and again thank you all so much. Hope you have a lovely day and I will see you next time. Thanks all.

Mark Chicoine:

Thanks everyone.

Jean Young:

Thanks all.

[End of Transcript]