At Good Cycles, we create employment opportunities for young people, with a focus on green jobs of the future – roles that help keep our communities cleaner, safer and healthier.
Do you know what important role we play in Melbourne’s recycling?
Renowned for its bustling cafe culture, Melbourne’s CBD is laden with cafes and eateries, with many occupying back streets and laneways. Good Cycles works with the City of Melbourne and their municipal waste contractor Citywide to collect and recycle organic waste from commercial venues within a selected project area in the CBD.
Adding an extra innovative environmental bonus, we use our fleet of cargo e-bicycles to navigate the laneways, saving on further CO2 emissions and traffic congestion. Our bikes and custom made trailers are the perfect alternative, able to weave through tight routes without creating the obstructions, noise and pollution a van or truck may do.
What started as a trial in May 2022, we now collect food waste on cargo bikes all year round from 40 participating restaurants and cafes. Our riders visit the venues at an allotted time to collect the full 15 kg tubs, swap with the venue for an empty tub and deliver the organic waste to the Degraves Street Recycling Facility.
Since it started, the program has diverted over 400 tonnes of food waste away from landfill where it creates methane as it decomposes. Methane is a greenhouse gas responsible for more than 25% of the global warming we are experiencing today and, due to its structure, is 80 times more potent than CO2 for twenty years after it is released.
In just the past 3 months, our riders have collected 75.9 tonnes of organic waste!
The organic waste is processed in the special ORCA machines at City of Melbourne’s recycling processing plant. These machines are similar to a mechanical stomach, using both a mechanical process and enzymes (not too dissimilar to those in our own) to break the matter down. Thanks to the proper recycling, the council can use the nutrient-rich compost fertiliser across the city’s gardens and landscaping.
This partnership between Good Cycles, City of Melbourne and Citywide helps the city address a growing environmental issue around the incorrect management of organic waste material, but the ultimate impact for Good Cycles is the employment of staff in our Youth Employment Program (YEP). YEP uses a work-first approach, offering jobs to young people aged 18-28, with real income alongside tailored coaching and support to deliver technical and transferable skills, which increase job-readiness and reduce barriers to employment.
Since commencing in May 2022, our organic waste collections have specifically provided over 6850 hours of employment to YEP participants. A total of 14 YEP participants have been directly involved with the organic waste collection project.
Good Cycles is proud to be a part of this innovative, sustainable solution to organic waste management that not only removes food waste from landfill, reduces noise, vehicle congestion and CO2 emissions used to collect waste, but does so in a way that incorporates our mission of helping young people in creating ‘Jobs for the Future’.
Fighting climate change is a load of rubbish – one organic waste tub at a time that we are very proud to be a part of!
Across our four commercial divisions, Good Cycles has a number of ways we can work with businesses to improve environmental and social impact. Want to know how we can work together? Reach out and let’s chat!
“Climate crisis is happening. I think providing jobs for young people in this type of industry is actually really good because personally it makes me feel good and I can go home and say ‘Oh, I made a difference today’. Even if it was small, I did something”.