RECYCLING

While our retailers have their own internal recycling practices, many of them also offer various recycling initiatives in which customers can participate. Here are a few examples of different ways you can contribute to recycling programs:

FEEL GOOD HUB

Have you seen our Feelgood Hub? In 2019 Highpoint partnered with SCR Group to install a clothing drop-off hub for shoppers to easily recycle their unwanted clothing. A world first in clothing drop-off hub design, the Feelgood Hub is a complete revamp of the traditional metal clothing hubs aimed to enhance user experience, motivate users to drop-off their unwanted clothes and change perceptions around clothing hubs and their importance in our circular economy.  

100% of what is collected from our clothing hubs is diverted from landfill. 70% can be reused in local and global communities where they are needed most, 15% is recycled into wiper rags and the remaining 15% is converted into biofuels. Highlights from November 2019 - February 2020 include:

- 1,433 kgs of clothing collected
- 42,990,000 L of water saved. This is equivalent to each Australian drinking 3 bottles of water (500mL) each 
- 94,578 kg Greenhouse Gas savings. This is equivalent to taking 36 cars off Victorian roads for 1 year 
- 28,501 kWh in Electricity savings. This is equivalent to powering 1,583 Australian homes for 1 day 

The Highpoint Feelgood Hub is located Level 2, outside near the Rebel Sport entrance. 
 

WOOLWORTHS

Woolworths is working towards positively influencing its retail supply chain to become more sustainable and reduce its carbon footprint. 

Woolworths has several organic produce suppliers who have recently adopted recycled packaged and it has completed the total elimination of polystyrene trays from its produce organics supply network, converting to compostable trays or recyclable plastic. Woolworths continues to work with all of its suppliers to actively pursue packaging alternatives that reduce the amount of packaging or increasing its recyclability where possible.

Moving towards a target of zero food waste to landfill, many diversion programs have been implemented, including food donation to farmers and food rescue charities like OzHarvest, FoodBank and SecondBite, as well as commercial food recycling and the new end-to-end stock-loss initiative ‘Fresher Faster’.

Woolworths partners with the REDcycle recycling program to provide customers with a way to recycle the soft plastic bags that packages many frozen products and bakery items (which cannot be recycled via Australia’s regular recycling program), to keep it out of landfill and dispose of it responsibly. REDcycle collects the plastic from dedicated bins at the front of 100 Woolworths' Supermarkets in Sydney and Melbourne and sends it to an Australian processor to make plastic park furniture. Since it began the partnership in 2015, it has disposed of 190 tonnes of plastic this way, equivalent to 47.6 million pieces of packaging! 

In addition, Woolworths recently announced that they will be eradicating single-use plastic bags by 2018, which is exciting news for our planet!
 
Find out more on the Woolworths website or shop at our Woolworths store.
 

COUNTRY ROAD

Country Road has partnered with the Australian Red Cross on Fashion Trade - a unique clothing exchange program that rewards customers with a $10 discount voucher for donating pre-owned Country Road clothing to the Red Cross and saving clothing from going to landfill.

Through Country Road’s Fashion Trade program, more than 44,000 items of clothing and accessories were donated by customers and Country Road, contributing in excess of $2.1 million (in retail value) to the Red Cross in Australia and New Zealand.

Find out more on the Country Road website or visit our Country Road store today.


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