CurbCycle is a Banksia Foundation 2022 Sustainability Award winner in the Circular Transition category for its CurbyIt recycling program, which allows households to recycle soft plastics through their kerbside recycling bin.
The recycling program helps households to recycle soft plastics by segregating them into a used plastic bag and attaching a CurbyTag with a QR code to be scanned before placing the bag into their kerbside recycling bin. The bag and its contents go on to be recycled together.
The CurbyTag enables identification and sorting at the recycling facility and households receive acknowledgement from CurbyIt enabling future rewards. The geolocation, quality and quantity of the soft plastics is reported to Councils, recyclers, and industry partners through an interactive dashboard.
Through effective engagement with participants, the Curby Program guides, and nurtures sustainable behaviour within the community to recover high volumes of soft plastics with low contamination rates resulting in a desirable product for re-manufacturers. Transforming what was once considered waste, into a valuable circular resource.
Since Curby’s first trial with Central Coast Council 18 months ago, the Curby Program has commenced full scale operations and now operates in five NSW Councils with over 30 Councils expressing interest to adopt a Curby Program. With over 20,000 households successfully recycling soft plastics and other hard to recycle materials through their kerbside recycling bin, CurbyIt have diverted more than 180,000 bags of soft plastics from landfill preventing them from becoming wind-blown litter in streets or pollutants in waterways. At current growth rates CurbCycle forecast the Curby Programs could efficiently achieve 20-30 Per cent recovery rates within the next three years without costly incentives like Container Deposit Schemes (CDS) or the need for new collection infrastructure.
The Curby Program builds on the foundation of existing behaviour and infrastructure resulting in an easy yet cost effective adoption and a successful blueprint to recover other problematic material. Driven by industry collaboration and supported by local government, processors, and producers, CurbyIt helped build a value chain for soft plastics by delivering a responsible consumption and production service innovation to the community.
Following the success of the Soft Plastics Program, the duplicatable blueprint CurbyIt has created now maps to expand into more Councils and start recovering other “hard to recycle” materials such as textiles and batteries. With activation and empowerment of community through education and measurable impact, CurbyIt has bridged the gap between community and industry to achieve a sustainable future together as responsible consumers and producers.
Curbcycle says CurbyIt helped build a value chain for soft plastics by delivering a responsible consumption and production service innovation to the community.
The company says it was honoured not only to simply stand among this year’s finalists in the NSW Sustainability award.s but to win its category, which it believes is a testament to the potential of innovative industry collaboration.
Located on the NSW Central Coast, the Curby team and all our supporting partners have worked incredibly hard to deliver a value chain that was initially thought to be impossible, says Curbcycle.
What the company planned to do was the exact opposite of what they had been told to do for the past 20 years, to put soft plastics into the yellow bin.
According to Curbcycle the CurbyIt Programs bridge the gap between community and industry by enabling hard to recycle items like soft plastics to be recycled through the kerbside bin, with traceability and engagement to help navigate and guide community.
Slowly but surely, the company says this is proving that not only does this model work, but it enhances existing infrastructure, builds on existing behaviour and results in a high quality and volume material.
CurbyIt launched its first trial in 2020 with 2,000 households, fast forward 2 years and CurbyIt operates in over 18,000 households, won the 2022 Good Design Award for Service Design, and now holds the 2022 NSW Sustainability Award for Circular Transition.
These incredible accolades recognise the positive impact we’re making towards achieving a more sustainable future and we plan to expand our operation enabling more households to be part of the solution and help build a circular economy, said the company.
Winners of the NSW Sustainability Awards will be automatically entered into the prestigious 34th National Banksia Sustainability Awards. The winners of these national awards will be announced in March 2023.
