What is going on for LUP this month ? New listings, a case study in paint re-purposing and our participation at Infiniti Sprint … This newsletter will let you know everything !
Infiniti – A Sprint Designed to Accelerate Circular Business (Melbourne, Australia)
In the last weekend of April, LUP was honored to have been able to provide mentorship & partake on the judging panel of Infiniti Sprint. Infiniti Sprint was an event designed by the Common Purpose Collective held at IBM studios in Melbourne, Australia.
A total of seven teams worked tirelessly over the weekend to test the business viability of ideas that contributed to the goal of responsible consumption and drive circularity in Australia. The ideas ranged from recycling used nail polish, modular furniture, to recycling and re-designing fashion trends, with the final winners of the Sprint presenting a wonderful concept around recycled coffee cups using a holistic approach by incorporating technology & incentives for returning used cups.
Congratulations to Kirill, Ira & Nick on their winning start-up concept and we wish them all the very best with their innovative and excellent business idea.
Paintback : A Case Study in Paint Re-Purposing in Australia
We were delighted to meet with Karen Gomez, Chief Executive of Paintback Ltd in Melbourne, Australia this month to discuss the amazing work they do and how they were able to set-up and provide a national solution for managing unwanted paint across Australia.
Established in 2016, Paintback is a world-first in its design, industry-led initiative designed to divert unwanted paint and packaging from ending up in landfill & waterways across Australia.
As an independent not-for-profit organisation, Paintback is funded through a 15 cents per litre levy on eligible paint products of between 1 to 20 litres. Alongside the responsible disposal of waste paint Paintback are committed to researching new ways to repurpose unwanted paint materials.
The process works by having households and trade painters taking their unwanted paint and packaging to a Paintback site where Paintback picks up the waste paint and transports it from the collection point for treatment. The packaging and waste liquid are separated, the containers recycled. Then the waste paint is treated in a number of ways including energy recovery for solvent and liquid/solid separation for water-based paint, significantly minimising landfill.
More information on this inspiring Australian business can be found at https://www.paintback.com.au/.
New Listings
Plastic Wheel Covers
We have a new listing for plastic wheel covers. These plastic wheel covers may be the same material used to manufacture bumper bars. They are located Australia wide & open to both Local & International solutions. Approximately 100 to 150 tonnes per annum is currently being sent to landfill.
Labels Backing Paper
The backing paper/release liner left over once labels are peeled off. The labels backing are commonly made of paper and silicone coated otherwise plastics such as Polypropylene (PP) or Polyester (PET) based liners. These liners are currently ending up as waste from warehouses & distribution centres as there is no current solution we are aware of to recycle this in Australia. LUP has access to approximately 20-40 tonnes of this per month which currently also ends up in landfill.
Listing update: Bread
Over the past couple of months, LUP has been engaged in trying to re-home several thousand tonnes of bread waste per annum that currently ends up in landfill across Australia.
The current update on this project is logistics is unfortunately posing as our biggest challenge. This is due to the limited shelf life of the bread (requiring to be transported within 4 days after taken off retail shelves) and the considerably dispersed volumes spread out over hundreds of locations across the country.
Based on the various locations, unfortunately the current volumes don’t enable us to organise dedicated transport just for the bread to be consolidated and/or delivered to the several potential buyers we have found across Australia.
As we would still like to find a long-term & sustainable solution for bread waste across Australia, if LUP was able to consolidate additional bread waste we may be able to organise dedicated transportation runs so the bread can get to these secondary sources that could re-use it instead of ending up in landfill.
If you or someone within your network currently has access to wasted bread across Australia, please do reach out to us to see if we could potentially collaborate in order to work out a sustainable solution for wasted bread.
Active Listings: Wooden Skids & Timber Dunnage
Imported pallets are still a massive landfill issue in Australia. We are still trying to find sustainable ways to close the loop for imported timber pallets / skids and timber dunnage. Please contact us if you can find a use for these or if you know of someone who may be able to take them.
Have a listing you want to register with LUP Global?
Then register it here. As we mentioned on our launch night, we may not be able to find a recipient or a supplier it straight away, but as our network grows, invariably the connections will come. Having your listings registered means we’re always on the look out to bring the right people in![/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]You can get in touch with is via info@lupglobal.com.