The Circle Awards celebrate and unite those leading the way to a better future.

When it comes to existing materials, the building industry has become comfortable with destructive, wasteful practices and as a result construction waste accounts for almost half of all waste in Australia.

Revival Projects’ Zero Footprint Repurposing initiative addresses two of the fundamental industry issues by reducing construction waste, (including the discarding of existing materials and the associated energy use and carbon emissions) and reducing the harvesting and consumption of new materials (including the associated energy use and carbon emissions).

Driven by a belief that existing materials offer the most immediate and dramatic opportunities for improving sustainable practice in new design, the team is on a mission to normalise the responsible handling of existing materials.

At the heart of the initiative are Repurposing Hubs. These storage facilities are setup in temporarily available spaces and offered to the industry to store existing materials free of charge, on the condition that they repurpose the materials back into the site which they came from.

This is supported by ongoing work focused on changing perceptions of how relevant existing materials can be in the context of new design at all scales, through inspiration (demonstrating what can be done) and education (empowering others to do it themselves).

Revival Projects are also currently the only Commercial Builder in Australia to hold B Corp accreditation.

We’re all too aware that the majority of people care deeply about the ‘big issues’ of our time, but doom and gloom messaging leaves them feeling disengaged, overwhelmed, or anxious about their role in the solutions.

This is exactly where ‘Art As Activism’ comes in. Brenna draws illustrations about the tough subjects, with a focus on humour, positivity and with techniques deliberately chosen to motivate, engage and inspire.

Released for free online three times a week, the illustrations aim to add to the conversation and further positive global movements. Having grown a significant social media following, Brenna’s work has become a valuable tool for sustainability and other activism projects around the world.

There is an unfathomable amount of waste being produced from the hair, beauty, dermal, barbers & pet groomer industries, which most of us aren’t even aware of.

Sustainable Salons enables businesses to become more sustainable, instantly, by providing bins for each resource stream. Resulting in 95% of waste being diverted away from landfill.

All resources are collected and taken to Sustainable Salons’ depots across Australia and New Zealand, processed and, via partners, created into closed-loop products such as medical wigs, combs, pet leashes, plant pots, oil-spill soaking hair booms.

Since 2015 they’ve diverted over 1.2 million kilograms worth of resources away from landfill, while rewarding their members, employing the differently-abled and giving back to communities.

Before the introduction of Return and Earn, more than 160 million drink containers littered the streets, beaches, waterways and parks of NSW. Container litter made up 44% of litter volume and cost more than $162 million a year to manage.

Initially launched as litter reduction initiative in December 2017, Return and Earn has gone on to become a product stewardship scheme that has fundamentally shifted the way the community views waste.

The scheme provides a financial incentive (10c refund) for people to return their containers for recycling and has rapidly become part of everyday life in NSW with close to 80% of NSW residents (aged 18+) having participated. It has also become a key fundraising channel for thousands of community groups, schools and charities. Raising over $35 million in donations and fees from hosting return points.

Highlights include:

• Over 8 billion containers returned through the network
• 755,000 tonnes of materials recycled
• $800 million+ in container refunds to the community

Return and Earn demonstrates that collectively we can have a significant impact and delivers strong environmental, economic and social benefits.

A footwear brand with the sole purpose to design and produce environmentally sustainable shoes.

YY Nation replaces petroleum-based plastics with natural materials like Merino wool, Pineapple leaves, Bamboo, Sugarcane, Algae and Castor oil and diminishes carbon emissions, in order to improve consumer consumption habits and encourage active, healthy lifestyles.

YY Nation launched with the world’s lowest carbon footprint shoe at 5.45kg CO2 emissions. Certified by Thinkstep-anz^™, peer reviewed by Ekos^™. The materials utilised help remove carbon from the atmosphere, some clean water and others are even carbon negative.

Established as a New Zealand and B-Corp Delaware company, the team has focused their attention on building a holistic, transparent, and sustainable business model that breathes life into an industry that typically produces huge amounts of pollution.

In Australia, we waste an estimated 660,000,000 meals from our food service sector. The equivalent of each business wasting over 14,000 meals annually. While we're throwing all this food in the bin, we also have a huge social problem on our hands – the rising cost of living is increasing the strain on households and vulnerability

Forkful is a tech-for-good solution that aims to address both problems by empowering and inspiring the community to fight food waste, one bite at a time. The venue app allows food retailers and hospitality venues to list their surplus, unsold food onto the platform within seconds, with consumers purchasing directly via Forkful and collecting from the venue as takeaway.

While it’s early stages, the team have completed trials and have a number of pilots lined up in Melbourne through strategic partnerships, and will use their learnings to refine their rollout hyper-local roll out plan.

With every 20 meals Forkful saves from going to waste, being the equivalent of taking one car off the road for a day, it will be extremely exciting to watch this product scale.

Did you know that traditional beauty products contain 80-95% water? Not only is this a waste of water, but it also has a massive impact on the carbon footprint generated through packaging and shipping.

Dust & Glow re-engineered their formulations to remove water and plastic waste, creating a range of clean, vegan and cruelty free (certified by PETA), refillable, NZ Made skincare & haircare formulas – for a healthy glow and a happy planet!

Each product saves over 3 litres of water, 3 plastic bottles and 1% of sales to provide clean water access to those who need it the most.

On a mission to save over 1 Million days of clean water access to those who need it the most by 2025, since launch donations have already contributed to over 20,000 days.

It’s estimated that 2 billion disposable nappies and continence aids are sent to landfill annually in Australia. Each taking years to break down, while releasing climate-changing Co2e emissions.

DiaperRecycle diverts used disposable nappies from landfill by offering a subscription waste nappy collection service for households and businesses, then recycles them into cat litter.

On a mission to develop an economically viable process to recycle nappies and make a product that meets the sustainability requirements of the modern consumer, DiaperRecycle developed their own, carbon neutral recycling technology. Plastic and fibres are separated and cleaned, before the plastic is distributed to plastic recyclers and the fibre used to create the cat litter.

What started as R&D in their backyard in 2016 is now a commercial demonstration recycling facility in Melbourne, the only one of its kind in Australia, ready to scale nationally and internationally.

Life cycle analysis, conducted by Blue Marble, shows DiaperRecycle’s process emits 82% less carbon than incineration and 80.6% less than landfill. Plus 1litre of their cat litter saves 1kg CO2-e emissions.

Local government is on the front-line of the transition to a circular economy, and ground-zero when it comes to mitigating the climate crisis. Without clear state or federal plans or funding for decarbonising Australia’s production, consumption and disposal of materials, local councils are forced to suck-it-up and get going at making the best with the limited resources they have at hand.

The impending closure of its sole remaining landfill in 2022/2023 kickstarted the City of Greater Bendigo's 'Circular Greater Bendigo' journey. The key vision of the project being to develop a circular region that shifted away from a traditional council model of 'rates, roads and rubbish' and instead adapted to a future that no longer included an operational landfill.

The Circular Greater Bendigo project provides an Australian-leading example of what local councils can achieve if they push to transition their region to a circular economy. Circular infrastructure, circular procurement, rooftop solar and supporting local circular businesses.

It’s worth highlighting that this project has had close to no budget, beyond staff time. It demonstrates what can be achieved when you combine the necessary expertise and drive from local government staff, with local businesses and a community desperate to affect change.

It is estimated 60% of people globally have issues accessing safe drinking water, due to improper wastewater management and contamination from aging distribution infrastructure. Water inequality is not an issue reserved for the developing nations - travel around regional Australia and you will find communities that are water stressed right now.

Nuvoe is rethinking the way we access clean drinking water - by treating water at the point of consumption. The Nuvoe Pod is a modular UV-C water purifier that kills up to 99.9999% of harmful bacteria and viruses in drinking water. Simply drop into the bottle, shake and in seconds you have a clean bottle and safe drinking water.

It’s designed to upgrade an existing refillable water bottle, converting it into a powerful water treatment device capable of processing a persons entire months drinking water on a single battery charge. Nothing else to do or pay for.

The team is on a mission is to deliver purified, crafted mineral water; on-demand from any water source – eliminating our reliance on single-use plastics for water distribution and creating access to water that is currently wasted due to the cost, complexity and expense of traditional water treatment infrastructure.

There is an unfathomable amount of waste being produced from the hair, beauty, dermal, barbers & pet groomer industries, which most of us aren’t even aware of.

Sustainable Salons enables businesses to become more sustainable, instantly, by providing bins for each resource stream. Resulting in 95% of waste being diverted away from landfill.

All resources are collected and taken to Sustainable Salons’ depots across Australia and New Zealand, processed and, via partners, created into closed-loop products such as medical wigs, combs, pet leashes, plant pots, oil-spill soaking hair booms.

Since 2015 they’ve diverted over 1.2 million kilograms worth of resources away from landfill, while rewarding their members, employing the differently-abled and giving back to communities.

Every year, Aussie farmers throw away the equivalent weight of 15,000 cars of edible mushrooms. And for every kilo of fresh mushrooms grown, another 3kg of compost waste is dumped.

TGD worked with Australian mushroom growers to tackle these problems and in doing so identified 4 distinct investment opportunities for growers to participate in, with the potential of $55 million in direct financial benefits and a more environmentally sustainable industry for generations to come.

Every year NSW generates 8000 tonnes of plastic take away waste. Every year we waste around 7.6 million tonnes of food across the supply and consumption chain in Australia. Most of this ends up in landfill.

Through this project, completed as part of her Year 12 Design and Technology studies, Sophie out to develop a solution that reduced both these numbers.

Looking beyond existing biodegradable options and inspired the concept of circularity, where there is no waste because all materials have a value, her project looked to utilise the large amounts of organic waste as part of the solution.

The result is a biodegradable takeaway packaging made from waste orange skins, and includes a bioplastic lining made from gelatine, glycerine and starch to make it waterproof and reduce the risk of contamination.

The transport sector is indispensable to our way of life. However, it poses one of the largest threats to environmental health, being responsible for 20% of global carbon emissions (with an overwhelming majority of this fifth attributed to petrol-guzzling cars). While measures are being taken to electrify the national fleet and reduce these figures, there are still several barriers to the electric vehicle transition, namely cost and accessibility.

Evee is Australia’s only 100% electric car sharing platform, helping drive down cost of ownership and increasing accessibility in a positive feedback loop, accelerating overall EV uptake.

By renting out their EV, owners make an income which brings down the general cost of ownership. Driving an EV then becomes more accessible to renters, and oft-times this exposure to a battery-operated vehicle becomes the catalyst to buying their own.

Each Evee trip prevents on average 40kg of CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere. To this day, the platform has 150+ electric cars available across Australia to rent, catered for over 6,000 customers, and booked 12,000 rental days.

Evee has already started its launch in New Zealand and plans to expand to the UK in 2023, followed by Europe, Canada and the US.

We are at a turning point with Gen Y & Z starting to dominate the market. These younger generations are quickly adopting more sustainable lifestyle practices and a redefining the concept of 'ownership' through the use of re-commerce businesses such as Uber, AirBNB or Depop.

Driven by a belief that the idea of acquiring more stuff at the expense of Mother Earth isn’t just old fashioned, it’s out of fashion. The Releaseit team set out to build Australia's largest rental marketplace and encouraging both B2B and B2C rentals.

While still early days, the platform currently offers over 15,000 rental products across 10 major categories (Baby & Kids, Fashion, Furniture, Garden & Tools, Home, Office & Storage, Party & Events, Sports & Rec, Technology & Vehicles).

Releaseit makes it easy for consumers to save money, make money, experience more, save storage space and reduce their environmental footprint all in one place. There is a lot to love about the platform and we can not wait to follow their journey.

Fresh flowers remain a largely unexplored issue in sustainability, generally they have a very short shelf life, require energy in cultivation and assembly, copious amounts of wasteful packaging and excessive emissions through land and air transportation.

Floral Image set out to analyse and compare their reusable flower arrangements, made from raw and recycled materials, with fresh flowers by commissioning EDGE Environment to prepare a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) report.

The research showed the environmental impact of Floral Image’s service is 98% lower than the fresh flower equivalent, and 80x better for the environment (when compared to fresh flowers, over an average 5 year lifespan).

Floral Image was founded in Australia, with their head office in Adelaide, and is the largest flower rental business across the globe, with a network of 84 franchises in 18 countries and growing.

Disclaimer: This LCA was carried out by ALCAS certified practitioners at Edge Environment. The study has not been independently peer-reviewed against ISO14041.

During the COVID lockdown 45% of Australian's reporting feeling loneliness and as the studies show, isolation can lead to poor health choices, mental illness, and emotional distress.

UnitePlayPerform (UPP) is a wellbeing universe created in a response to isolation – seeking new, radical, experimental and genuine creative connections at the intersection of contemporary art and neuroscience.

In guided workshops underpinned by neuroscientific research, participants disarm themselves, disrupt their habits, unite in creativity, play as learning, perform new narratives, and transform using movement, sense, language and energy for radical self-expression.

Both within UPP’s special spaces and beyond, this project creates a stage for inclusive, heart-led communities that are ageless, genderless, timeless and sacred.

There is an unfathomable amount of waste being produced from the hair, beauty, dermal, barbers & pet groomer industries, which most of us aren’t even aware of.

Sustainable Salons enables businesses to become more sustainable, instantly, by providing bins for each resource stream. Resulting in 95% of waste being diverted away from landfill.

All resources are collected and taken to Sustainable Salons’ depots across Australia and New Zealand, processed and, via partners, created into closed-loop products such as medical wigs, combs, pet leashes, plant pots, oil-spill soaking hair booms.

Since 2015 they’ve diverted over 1.2 million kilograms worth of resources away from landfill, while rewarding their members, employing the differently-abled and giving back to communities.