In our Champions Academy programs we often use branded merchandise for associative learning – teaching by attaching a story to an object (like sunglasses, for cognitive bias; or a keep-cup like a community, you have to put something into it first, if you want to be able to get anything out of it later).
It often bothered me that I didn’t know what happened to the merch after people took it home from events. I hated the thought that it probably ended up in the bin, after the novelty wore off.
One day not long after the Next Gen of Eyre event, I found myself lamenting our surplus stock. We’d had to buy things in large batches of 100’s rather than the exact quantity we needed and so wound up with lots left over.
Although it looked like a beautiful, colourful display of merchandise in our office, I knew it was wasteful.
What really annoyed me was that we had a number of painpoints even getting the stock in the first place. Because we’d been limited by a tight budget, we’d imported a lot of items. Some things had arrived damaged, others had not arrived in time for the event. Then there was the stuff that looked great in the online photos, but was not great quality when it came to using the product.
I realised on reflection, that a lot of our events had created surplus stock at the time, and suddenly our merch shelves began to feel like a wall of shame.
Most of our stock was plastic – I wondered ‘what if we could launch a product stewardship program and recycle it?’
Then a thought spiral began…
I toyed with the idea of getting into manufacturing, so that we could create the exact amount of an item that we needed – I felt quite sure that other small businesses like ours were experiencing the same painopints, and that we could offer this as a service in our region.
But it was about then that a lightbulb moment hit me. We could combine the recycling idea with the manufacturing idea, if we were really clever about it.
My hypothesis was that if we could find a way to use our social enterprise as the foundation for a circular economy model, it could (hypothetically) lead to the creation of local employment, logistical networks and value chains. We could activate an ecosystem of shared value that might combat rural contraction, decline and exodus in a new way.
I got to work on designing the model, doing due diligence and researching everything I could about key waste streams and how we could use them as resources.
I applied and was accepted into EnergyLab’s Women In Climate & Energy Fellowship, where I was fortunate to be mentored by industry leaders and become connected with other founders in the cleantech space.
My plan was to:
- build a proof of concept that demonstrated how a rural circular economy could work; and
- open-source it – the idea being that we could empower tens of thousands more people this way, than we could through events and programs.
So that’s what I set about doing. I sold a car, applied for a grant and bought a shredder, injector, extruder, sheet press, pelletizer and large format 3D printer.
While it is early days, my awesome team and I have made exciting progress.
Next Gen Waste Co is now a reality and will soon the social enterprise will be open to the public.
The more I learn about the current challenges and gaps in waste processing, the more optimistic I become about the idea of ‘local scale,’ and the more complex rural challenges I recognise, could be addressed through the process.
My dream is to never see another rural community reach a tipping point of no return – I don’t know if waste is the key, but I’m willing to have a crack and find out.
If circularity can help us to create new rural ecosystems of innovation, entrepreneurship and shared value, this can move small communities beyond a holding pattern of survival, toward social, environmental and economic prosperity.
