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Dressed by Vinnies Day
Dressed by Vinnies is held any day that works for your school or organisation but one suggestion is National Dressed by Vinnies day on 26 October. Prior to the event all participants need to visit a local Vinnies shop and purchase any item to wear on the free dress day. They will then be Dressed...
20th February, 2019
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Australian Waste – Time for a New Story
It’s time to start telling a different story about Australia’s waste industry. That the China ban in fact represents the massive incentive our country needs to start looking for solutions. And more and more stakeholders are contributing to the conversation about the future focused solutions. Fore more, click here.
19th February, 2019
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NACRO Conference 2019
The 2019 NACRO Conference will be held at the Pullman Melbourne Albert Park on 14-15 October 2019 – so please put the dates in your diary and set aside some budget now to attend. We’ve booked an even bigger venue for 2019 because the 2018 conference was totally sold out and received a 100% satisfaction...
Events
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Buy It Back Day
Buy It Back Day (BIBD) is on Saturday 17 November this year as part of National Recycling Week (November 12-18), and encourages people to buy second hand or buy products containing recycled content. Organised by Planet Ark. For more, read on.
26th October, 2018
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More Recycling Equals Less Tax
More recycling from NSW households could reduce taxes by up to $250 million per year or some $100 per household, according to the Australian Council of Recycling (ACOR). Speaking at the Keep NSW Beautiful “Sustainable Cities Seminar” and at the NACRO Annual Conference, ACOR CEO Pete Shmigel said recovering more household material for recycling meant...
26th October, 2018
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NACRO Strategy and Positioning 2019
NACRO has announced its new strategy with four key objectives, along with a three-tier, data-driven media and engagement positioning strategy. 1). Reduce illegal/unintentional dumping and increase reuse/recycling in collaboration with governments. 2). Expand influence with consumers, councils and commercials. 3). Uphold sector integrity for transparency and accountability. 4). Deliver member benefits for organisational sustainability. For...
26th October, 2018
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Charities Spending Millions on Waste
Charities in Australia spend $13 million on waste management each year, sending 60,000 tonnes of unusable donations; that have no value and can’t be recycled; as waste to landfill every year. On the positive side, charities divert over 500,000 tonnes of waste away from landfill every year by their reuse and recycling programs, with Australians...
26th October, 2018
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NACRO on ABC News Breakfast
Omer Soker, CEO of NACRO was invited onto ABC News Breakfast to discuss responsible donations and how Australian consumers can help charities maximise the value of their donations into social welfare programs. Watch the video here.
26th October, 2018
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$1.75 Million Reasons to Donate to Charity
A Canadian man’s sister had told him it was time to sift through his bulging closet and donate unused old clothing to a charity. That’s when he stumbled on the $1,750,000 winning lottery ticket, which he had purchased last year. The benefits of clearing out old closets and donating to charity! For more, read on.
26th October, 2018
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EPA NSW Illegal Dumping Grants
Illegal dumping grant applications are now open and close on 5pm 30 October 2018. The NSW EPA is seeking expressions of interest (EOIs) from community groups on projects that identify local illegal dumping hotspots and have planned clean-up and prevention action. This is the sixth of eight funding rounds under the Combating Illegal Dumping: Clean-up and...
26th October, 2018
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Charity Fraud Awareness Week
This week is Charity Fraud Awareness Week (22 October to 26 October), an international initiative designed to raise awareness about fraud in the charity sector, and share best practice solutions in tackling fraud and financial crime. For more, click here.
26th October, 2018
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Fake Charity Scams
For Charity Fraud Awareness Week, Scamwatch has revealed that charities are losing out on more than $320,000 in donations due to fake charity scams. Scamwatch is appealing to donors to be wary of fake charities or people impersonating real charities. In 2018, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) received almost 690 reports of scams....
26th October, 2018
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NACRO Conference Delegates 100% Satisfied
All of the delegates who packed out the QT Gold Coast conference facility said they were 100% satisfied with the NACRO Conference. Huge thanks to all the speakers and panellists including Craig Reucassel, Mike Ritchie, Pete Shmigel, Brian Walker, Peter Knock, Richard Wood, Bianca Gray, Bianca Williams, Laura Hill, Tony Khoury, Gemma Rygate and Faye...
Events
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Australian Circular Fashion Conference
The Australian Circular Fashion Conference (ACFC) is Australasia’s leading business event on sustainability in fashion. Following the success of the inaugural event last year, ACFC 2019 is a call to action to the industry to implement fashion sustainability within 5-10 years, targeted at over 500 business leaders. For more on ACFC or to register, read...
10th September, 2018
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Garage Sale Trail
Garage Sale Trail is Australia’s biggest weekend of garage sales, and is happening on October 20 & 21 this year. Over 400,000 Australians will hit the streets that weekend in search of pre-loved bargains. The event which aims to encourage Australians to choose pre-loved whether through an op shop or garage sale aims to save...
10th September, 2018
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What’s Inside My Wardrobe?
What’s inside your wardrobe? This fun, fashionable and thought-provoking event is free to everyone interested in how our fashion shopping choices can change the world! A fabulous line up of panelists talk about sustainability and ethical practices in the fashion industry and how op-shopping fits into our every day fashion choices. Its a precursor to...
10th September, 2018
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October is Buy Nothing New Month
Buy Nothing New Month is the brainchild of Tamara DiMattina, who Fairfax call ‘PR to The Planet’. It started in Melbourne and is spreading to the Netherlands and USA. It’s a one month challenge to buy nothing new (with the exception of essentials like food, hygiene and medicines). It’s literally about taking one month off...
10th September, 2018
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The Future of Recyling
The ‘Future of Recycling’ is the theme for NACRO’s Annual Conference, to be held at QT Gold Coast from 15-16 October 2018. The Event Program has been finalised and boasts the best line-up of speakers, sessions, panels and thought-provoking insights ever compiled for a NACRO Conference. More delegates than ever before have already registered and...
29th August, 2018
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Op Shop Tips from Elle Magazine
In abeautifully titled article ‘Fashion But Make it Second Hand’, Elle Australia presents 10 useful op shopping tips from women who only buy second hand. For tips one to ten, read on.
29th August, 2018
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Yes, Even Supermodels Go Op Shopping
Supermodel Helena Christensen says shops in thrift shops. Female First in the UK have her quoting “I shop at second-hand stores and online. I find much more joy in finding pieces that have been lived-in and are unique”. Spread the word. Op shopping truly does inspire joy, with pieces that are unique and have been...
29th August, 2018
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E-waste Exports Highlight Need for Tighter Controls
Reports that a defunct computer screen dropped at an Australian retailer for recycling was shipped to a junkyard in Thailand have renewed calls for Australia to get serious about e-waste controls, with calls for Australia to support international ban on such exports. Under current laws any such waste should have been sent to an approved recycler...
29th August, 2018
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Trash Taxi Services – The App Waste Future
We use our phones to do everything from delivering our favorite late night cravings to tracking our exercise. So why can’t we use the technology we engage with on a regular basis to do something good for the planet? Recycle Track Systems works like a typical App and gives users the ability to schedule on-demand...
29th August, 2018
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Rubbish to Energy in Sweded
Sweden “recycles nearly all of its waste” and in doing so “generates electricity and heating”. So should Australia become more like Sweden and make our waste useful? Sweden has banned most landfill and has invested heavily with 34 waste-to-energy plants currently operating, with their first built in the 1940s! With half the waste in Sweden recycled and 49% of...
29th August, 2018
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France Targets 100% Plastics Recycling
Vive La France. France will roll out a series of measures to accelerate President Emmanuel Macron’s goal of reaching 100% plastic recycling by 2025. Junior Environment Minister Brune Poirson added “Declaring war on plastic is not enough. We need to transform the French economy.” Economic transformation and encouraging consumers to recycle is the key. For...
29th August, 2018
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Smarter e-Waste Urban Mining
Janet Gunter, co-founder of The Restart Project estimates that 1,000 Titanics’ worth of discarded electronics is dumped in the UK, with much of it extremely toxic if mishandled. In 2017, the United Nations University’s Global E-waste Monitor predicted global e-waste would hit 50 million tonnes this year — three million tonnes of it being small...
29th August, 2018
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Recycling Denim into Insulation
An American company is in the business of turning blue things into green, and giving new life to jeans. Its an example of effective down cycling, with the former garment not recycled for more fashion use, but to meet commercial demand for insulation for homes and office buildings and fibre for bedding. Ultimately, the success...
29th August, 2018
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What to Do with Apparel Too Dirty to Donate
The Council for Textile Recycling in the USA estimates that 10,000 tonnes of textiles, in the form of clothes, shoes, accessories, manchester and accessories ends up in landfill. That’s 37kg on average of every person. How to divert these unusable donations from landfill and create new opportunities for recycling or down cycling is a key...
29th August, 2018
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EPA NSW Product Improvement Grants
The EPA NSW’s Product Improvement Program is open to applications, with individual grants of $50,000 to $1 million available. The program supports co-investment in infrastructure projects that aim to improve the quality of recycled materials, reduce the amount of unrecyclable material left at the end of the process, increase the amount of waste materials recycled,...
4th July, 2018
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NACRO Conference – Draft Agenda Announced
The leaders of the charitable recycling sector will be on the Gold Coast during 15-16 October, attending the NACRO Annual Conference 2018. Join them – register today. 90% of members said they want to know the Future of Recycling. So that’s the conference theme. More specifically, the Future of Recycling, Retail and Responsible Donating. Each...
Events
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Vinnies NSW Launches Second Bulk Container Sorting Facility
Vinnies NSW has launched a second Bulk Container Deposit Centre as part of the state’s container deposit scheme. The Unanderra facility can process up to 100,000 containers per day, and complements existing over-the-counter sites and reverse vending machines with an efficient way to process large volumes of eligible containers. Container deposit refunds can be received...
25th May, 2018
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Second-hand really is the New ‘New’
Even in the luxury market. The meteoric rise of resale sites such as TrueFacet and Tradesy that provide dedicated environments for buying and selling pre-owned prestige watches and jewellery by offering guarantees of authenticity, has been achieved through best-in-class Search engine Optimisation (SEO). For example, TrueFacet mentions “Tiffany” 121 times on its Tiffany gallery page and...
25th May, 2018
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NACRO Invited on WA’s Container Deposit Scheme Advisory Board
The Hon. Stephen Dawson MLC, Minister for Environment has invited NACRO to join Western Australia’s Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) Advisory Group. Ro Richardson of the Western Australian Department of Environment Regulation gave NACRO members a thorough brief on the CDS opportunities for charitable recyclers, during the WA NACRO Members Meeting on 7 May 2018. For...
25th May, 2018
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How ThreadUp Can Digitally Disrupt Op Shops
ThredUp is an online retail platform seeking to reinventing second-hand shopping by disintermediating op shops and sending clothes direct to consumers. As Australian op shops look to develop their online offerings, ThredUp needs to be on the radar. Here’s a product review and individual perspective from Cheap Chic.
25th May, 2018
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New Income Opportunities in e-Waste
Forget panning for gold or extracting copper ore. A new study shows that recovering metals from discarded electronics, a process known as urban mining, is far less expensive than mining them the traditional way. In 2016 alone, the world discarded 44.7 million metric tons of unusable or simply unwanted electronics. A Chinese study found that organisations...
25th May, 2018
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Transparent Bins to Bring Clarity to Waste
For most people, once they lift the lid and throw their rubbish in the wheelie bin, their household waste is out of sight, out of mind. Gunther Hoppe, chief executive of the Mindarie Regional Council in Western Australia is hoping to challenge this mindset by putting wheelie bin contents on display. As a trial to...
25th May, 2018
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What Can Australia Learn from the World’s Best and Worst Recyclers?
Germany and Wales have seemingly mastered their waste problem. They could help Australia as it grapples with China’s ban on contaminated recyclable material. Having set an ambitious target to achieve zero waste by 2030, Wales could soon overtake Germany as the world’s leading recycling nation. Germany is so good at recycling they have even found a...
25th May, 2018
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Time for a Long-term Rethink on Recycling
Emergency measures in response to China’s ban on foreign waste, like stockpiling, landfilling or trying to find other international destinations for our recycling are not sustainable long-term solutions. We need a broad debate on a long-term rethink for an innovative, sustainable recycling sector – with all stakeholders coming together. Read The Conversation’s re-think suggestions here
25th May, 2018
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ACOR’s $150 Million Plan to Fix Recycling
The Australian Council of Recycling (ACOR) has laid out a roadmap that starts with harmonising bins nationally ($28M), upgrading sorting centres ($33M), developing more factories to produce paper pulp and plastic pellets ($57M), using raw materials for infrastructure ($32M) and burning waste into energy. ACOR’s strategic vision on strategic focus areas and where upgrades are...
30th April, 2018
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Greens $500 Million Industry Blueprint
In the lead up to the Meeting of Environment Ministers (MEM), the Greens released an industry blueprint on waste recycling, designed to expand the Australian waste management system to replace the need to export recyclables. The Greens want to spend $500 million over five years on infrastructure and programs to improve recycling with a national...
30th April, 2018
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Meeting of Environment Ministers
At the Meeting of Environment Ministers (MEM) on 27 April 2017 the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment and Energy and the Environment Minister from each Australian state and territory agreed to:. • Reduce the amount of waste and make it easier for products to be recycled. • Increase the demand for recycled products, and create...
30th April, 2018
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NACRO Feedback Survey
Have your say about NACRO in this short, easy multiple-choice survey. Your feedback on how we’re performing, what your needs are and what NACRO’s key priorities should be will help inform our strategy for 2018-19. We are developing an ambitious new strategic plan, but we need your input. Together we can achieve so much more, so...
12th April, 2018
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Queensland to Reintroduce Waste Levy
The Queensland Government has confirmed plans to reintroduce a waste levy in a bid to stop interstate waste entering the state. Full details have yet to be released but the Deputy Premier Jackie Trad has suggested that it may likely be around $50-$70 per tonne, and that it will be designed so it does not...
4th April, 2018
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Farewell and welcome NACRO’s new CEO
After nine years, my team and I are stepping down from managing the National Association of Charitable Recycling Organisations. It has been an honour to serve the association and a privilege to work with a wonderful series of Chairs, namely Ken Richardson (Lifeline), Cathy Bray (The Smith Family), John Hillier (UnitingCare) and Michael Skudutis (Salvos...
8th March, 2018
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Salvos link dropping donations to social media
Chief Executive of Salvos Stores, Matt Davis, said in a recent interview that the stark drop in donations — especially second-hand furniture — due to platforms such as Facebook and Gumtree is of concern. “Over the past 18 months we’ve really begun noticing a drop in donations. We think the timing of Facebook Marketplace, Buy...
31st January, 2018
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Over 4,700 Collection Bins across New York to disclose purpose
New York State Attorney General recently announced that over 4,700 donation collection bins throughout New York now disclose whether clothing or other items deposited in those bins are used for charitable or for-profit purposes in compliance with a new state law that imposes strict regulations on the placement, maintenance, and transparency of collection bins across...
25th January, 2018
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Eastern European modern-day slaves collecting donated clothing, UK police believe.
Northumbria Police and several UK newspapers have reported an arrested of six people after a number of dawn raids as part of an investigation into Modern Day Slavery in Newcastle – with potential victims believed to have been collecting charity bags. An investigation was launched last year after Northumbria Police received intelligence about a suspected...
25th January, 2018
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Southern Cross Recycling Group is launching new services
SCRgroup is launching a number of new services in 2018, including a home pick-up service; and clothing and electrical “Drop-Off Hubs”. Residents of Maribyrnong City Council now have access to 18 clothing and electrical drop-off hubs to dispose of unwanted textile and electrical items at six sites across the municipality. See the Maribyrnong City Council...
25th January, 2018
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Calls to reintroduce the landfill levy in QLD
The Queensland Member for Ipswich West, Jim Madden recently proposed the reintroduction of the landfill levy as a solution to reducing the level of dumping in Ipswich. Sadly the good Mr Madden has not linked the dots between increased levies and dumping on charities. Read the article at this link. After four months the report...
25th January, 2018
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New NACRO website launched
We’re excited to announce that our new and refreshed NACRO website is live after months of development. There’s a whole host of material, facts and figures, all to enhance the experience of the finding more about charitable recycling.The site even features an Op Shop locator. When we started the project we had big ideas to...
25th January, 2018
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Festive Season dumping
Sadly, the festive time of the year is reliably the worst for shameful behaviour by a select few who dump on charities. This year was no different. Members used social and traditional media to call for responsible donating. The media used strong terms such as “lazy idiots” but still the deluge continued. Following are some...
24th January, 2018
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NACRO VIC calls for disclosure laws for commercial recycling
In a recent article published and syndicated by the Herald Sun, NACRO criticized the diversion of charitable goods and services to private companies as a waste of resources. In response to the proliferation of donations away from benevolent organisation, much of which is being enabled by local councils, NACRO forewarned a call on the State...
23rd January, 2018
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The Future of Recycling
The 2018 conference theme is The Future of Recycling with powerfully thought-provoking speakers and panels designed to spark debate on how to transform the biggest challenges facing our sector into our greatest opportunities for the future. Plus The Future of Retail with the best line-up of expert retail speakers ever compiled. Plus Government. This is...
Events
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UK charity retail growth
The latest Quarterly Market Analysis Report (July to September 2017) published by the UK Charity Retail Association in early December 2017, saw strong sales indicators, including a 5.7 per cent like for like income growth. Plus 80 per cent of the report respondents saw positive growth in donated goods sales. Additionally, between Q3 2016 and Q3 2017,...
6th December, 2017
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Blockchain – fundraising of the future
The blockchain community launched a Philanthropy Foundation in September 2017, to promote the use of Blockchain technology in the not-for-profit sector to generate income. The Foundation’s mission includes “building a new revenue stream for charities by providing a Blockchain-powered technology platform, as well as tools, training and support”. The Harvard Business Review defines blockchain as the technology at the...
6th December, 2017
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Michigan’s Attorney General sues commercial donation collector
Michigan’s Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against ATRS, a Texas-headquartered company that owns and operates 251 clothing donation bins in the state, for deceptively operating the collection bins. The bins state that the Michigan Humane Society “receives 100% of the market value of every donation received at this location.” However, by contract, ATRS pays the Michigan...
6th December, 2017
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The way we produce, use, and reprocess clothing today is inherently wasteful, and current rising …
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s new report “A new textiles economy: Redesigning fashion’s future´ confirms members’ views that the steady production growth in fast fashion is intrinsically linked to a decline in utilisation per item, leading to an incredible amount of waste. It is estimated that more than half of fast fashion production is disposed of...
16th October, 2017