Enterprise: Revolve Recycling
What makes it special: It is estimated that there are up to 14 million tyres and tubes on unused bicycles in Australia’s garages, verandas and sheds, so Revolve Recycling’s plan to recycle them in collaboration with Tyrecycle has enormous potential.
Revolve Recycling is a platform for recovering, recycling and redeploying unwanted bicycles and scooters. Its aim is to give new life to old bikes. The start-up has diverted about 50 tonnes of material and 4000 bikes from landfill.
Revolve Recycling founder Pete Shmigel has worked in the recycling industry for 25 years – he was previously CEO of the Australian Council of Recycling and Lifeline Australia. One day, when out riding his bike, it occurred to Pete that there should be an environmental solution for bikes just as there is for so many other products. And believing that social enterprise is a great way to get things done, he set the business up in this way – since launching less than 18 months ago, Revolve has already created jobs for disadvantaged people and given 500 free bikes to underprivileged kids.
“We try to put a sustainability lens across everything we do.”
Pete hired Guido Verbis as Revolve General Manager. He is another experienced operator in the sustainability sector, who had previously managed Greenpeace’s international actions and operations department and the APAC branch of UK-based security and risk mitigation company AKE. “We try to put a sustainability lens across everything we do,” Guido says. “Making sure nothing goes to landfill, offsetting the emissions from our collections, hiring people of disadvantage, practising bike equity by giving free bikes to indigenous kids and refugee kids. It’s about really being mindful about enviro and social dimensions – impacts and opportunities – and then acting accordingly.”
In January this year, Revolve Recycling announced a collaboration with international award-winning tyre recycler and recycled-content product manufacturer Tyrecycle, so that bicycle tyres and tubes could be recycled rather than be thrown away, as has invariably been the case to date.
In the collaboration, Revolve Recycling will collect the tyres and tubes from bike shops and bikers and transport them to Tyrecycles new Erskine Park, NSW, plant, where they will be recycled into new Australian-based products.
“Until now, bicycle tyres and tubes have been challenging to recycle for a number of reasons, including the overall lack of scale and the need to remove metal valves,” Pete explains. “We will meet this challenge by consolidating collection of tyre material across many bike shops and by pre-treating it so that Tyrecycle can usefully employ it.”
It is estimated that there are up to 14 million tyres and tubes on unused bicycles in Australia’s garages, verandas, and sheds – 10,000 tonnes of material – so this initiative has enormous potential, as acknowledged by Suzanne Toumbourou, CEO of the Australian Council of Recycling, who described the partnership as a “terrific example of how the recycling industry partners and innovates for environmental benefits”.
Tyrecycle CEO Jim Fairweather says the higher-quality material his business will receive due to the collaboration will allow it to repurpose bicycle tyres and tubes in manufacturing products such as the rubber crumb used in playground equipment and road-building materials.
The initiative will involve building a drop-off network in Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong, NSW’s central west and Canberra. “We also plan to offer zero-waste services to bikes shops across Sydney, whereby we will collect and recycle their metal, rubber and e-waste,” Guido says.
This article first appeared in issue 40 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
