Earlier this year we asked for your feedback to help us develop our Circular Economy Strategy: Towards a Zero Waste Merri-bek.

We received over 340 responses from residents and 11 responses from local businesses.

We engaged the community in a variety of ways to ensure people from all backgrounds were able to participate. The activities we ran included:

  • Online survey with translations available
  • Printed surveys at the Coburg Customer Service Centre and at pop-up events
  • Printed translated surveys were distributed via our Community Connectors network
  • 3 in-person multicultural workshops
  • 1 business workshop
  • 5 community pop-ups in Fawkner, Brunswick Library, Coburg Mall, Hadfield's West Street Shops and Sydney Road Street Party.

Through the consultation we wanted to understand:

  • Community priorities for waste reduction, now and into the future
  • What community members and businesses already do to reduce waste going to landfill.
  • Community and business motivations to inspire a change towards circular economy practices.
  • What support is needed for community members to reduce household waste.
  • Specific needs of business owners and operators to reduce waste and adopt circular economy practices into their business models.
  • Additional suggestions for programs, initiatives or services that can support the draft strategy.

What we heard

Current behaviour

Participants across all engagement activities were asked what they currently do to reduce, reuse and recycle or participate in Circular Economy practices.

Barriers to participate in Circular Economy

We asked participants about which circular economy practice – reducing household waste, repurposing items, or recycling - they find most challenging.

We discussed what participants felt were the causes of these barriers, here's what we heard:

  • 21% of participants find it difficult to buy unpackaged, bulk or refilled foods or household items to reduce their waste due to the extra cost and time involved.
  • 23% find it hard to repair broken items due to the lack of specific skills and having no time and energy for extra tasks.
  • Other common barriers were the price of higher quality items and collection or disposal fees to recycle particular items as participants try to reduce their every day cost of living.
  • Having a large household with children and/or medical or other circumstances that require the use of disposable products was mentioned as another contributing factor.

Future change

We asked our community what might help them to reduce, reuse and recycle more:

Participants also had an opportunity to prioritise actions Council will take to support the Circular Economy.

Across all community engagement activities, the top five priority Council actions were:

  • Provide funding to community groups to help reuse, repair, share/borrow or recycle items.
  • Promote businesses or community groups that borrow/share items or sell in bulk.
  • Send households and businesses information or tools.
  • Organise events for the reuse, recycling or swapping of goods.
  • Promotion of local courses and workshops on Circular Economy topics.

Looking further into priorities for Council, our participants were asked to identify the types of household waste they struggle most with and would like Council to address in the next 5 years.

These are the top 3 types of waste that are a priority for our community:

What we've heard from businesses

We also reached out to the Merri-bek business community to understand their needs, priorities and barriers for participating in the Circular Economy.

Through surveys and a dedicated workshop, we heard that our business community:

  • Try to reuse, repair, repurpose or donate items instead of throwing them away
  • Produce and/or sell items that can be reused, repurposed and/or recycled
  • Produce and/or sell items made from recycled or repurposed materials
  • Reduce the amount of packaging used for the products sold
  • Make sure to recycle where possible.

The responses also identified that businesses were most likely to experience barriers in the design phase, raw materials, distribution and consumption behaviour.

The top issues for businesses were:

  • Inability to influence their supply chain
  • Not having the time or energy for additional tasks
  • Lack of required skills or knowledge.

Judging by survey responses, it would help the business community to participate in the Circular Economy if:

  • They have practical information about Circular Economy implementation
  • Government rebates
  • Information about changing customer expectations and learnings from other businesses.

Participants in the Business Workshop said that local governments could support businesses by creating supportive governance structures, sharing information and linking up businesses interested in adopting Circular Economy practices.

When we discussed what Council can do to support businesses, the top 3 priorities were:

  • Run or sponsor events and workshops about waste reduction
  • Advocate for federal funding
  • Send households and businesses information or tools.

As per the types of waste that should be a priority for Council in the next 5 years, our business participants identified the following 5 waste streams:

  1. Appliances and machines.
  2. Food waste.
  3. Textiles.
  4. Soft plastics.
  5. Cleaning products and household chemicals.