Melted down plastics, tossed out op-shop clothes and discarded wood have all found a home at a new Hunter community space.
Opening on Saturday October 26, the Full Circle Collective will bring together around 30 local businesses focused on reuse, upcycling, repair or resource recovery.
437 Hunter Street will house the pop-up for the next 12 months.
"We want to make the circular economy a bit more accessible to the community, rather than making it a term that governments use for policy writing," co-founder Bianca Bartlett said.
Co-created by Ms Bartlett, Thomas Michel and Siobhan Donges, the project is an initiative of environmental charity, Purple Card Project.
The space promoted a circular economy, where resources were in use for longer, Ms Bartlett said.
She said the new platform would allow small businesses who were typically sole-traders to show the true value of their products.
"Speaking with all the suppliers we now have in the shop, one of the biggest challenges in their businesses was actually being able to market and sell their products," she said.
Prices ranged from $12 earrings to $600-plus tables, with options for bespoke furniture, Ms Bartlett said.
Businesses featured include Resourceful Living, a plastic recycling business, Food2Soil, which turns food waste into feedstock, Kwila, a rehab program that makes recycled wooden furniture and Upcycle Newcastle, a textile recovery collective.
Mr Michel said a circular economy was all about trying to minimise the use of toxic materials that could be damaging to ecosystems or humans.
"The idea of waste is a bit of a misnomer, what we think of waste now, it still goes somewhere," Mr Michel said.
"The current way of economic thinking, just simply isn't sustainable, we are using up resources and we're overshooting the ecological boundaries of the planet," he said.
Rubbish, rubbish and more rubbish
Australia falls behind the global average of resource efficiency and waste minimisation, according to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
The CSIRO reported that the country's economy uses four times the materials to fulfil each person's needs compared to the world average.
According to the Organisation for the Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED), Australia's domestic material consumption per capita is almost three times higher than the OCED average.
Taking a closer look at the 10 council areas in the Hunter region, local waste generation is not much better.
The most recent data from the NSW Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), showed the region sent more than 300,000 tonnes of materials to landfill between 2021 to 2022.
The EPA classifies the Central Coast, Cessnock, Dungog, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Muswellbrook, Newcastle, Port Stephens, Singleton and Upper Hunter Shire as the Hunter region.
Per household an average of 25 kilograms of domestic waste (which includes, red, yellow and green bins) was generated each week with a recycling rate of almost 40 per cent.
Across NSW, an average of around 22 kilograms of domestic waste is collected with a recycle rate of 46 per cent.
Lake Macquarie topped the Hunter region for recycling rates at 56 per cent, while Dungog was at the bottom of the list at 22.5 per cent.
The recycle rate includes kerbside recycling, the container deposit scheme, kerbside organics, kerbside FOGO, alternative waste treatment, clean-up services and drop-off facilities.
Mr Michel said the secondary use of these recycled materials was typically at a much lower value than what was possible.
While the EPA did not state a specific domestic recycle goal, their 2041 waste and sustainable materials strategy aimed for an average 80 per cent recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030.
Nothing new
Upcycle Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Repair Cafe co-coordinator Gabrielle Clappinson was heading to the Full Circle Collective to drop-off some repurposed textiles.
She said people need to start thinking before they purchase their next item, and consider what they already have.
"There is no planet B, we only have one planet," Ms Clappinson said.
At the Repair Cafe, volunteers patch up anything from decades-old clothes and stuffed animals to falling apart furniture and tools to the occasional electronic.
"Most of the items that come into us are either very sentimental and they want to keep them," she said.
"We need people to think about their actions and their consequences."
She said people may be a little bit nervous about committing to a circular economy but it was as simple as repairing and fixing your belongings.
"We need to get from more of a me society to a we society," she said.
