LoopLab Yarra - EPA Waste Prevention and Reduction Finalist - 2026 Tidy Towns
Most sustainability programs ask a business owner to sit through training before they see any benefit. LoopLab Yarra flips that order: it starts by looking at what's actually happening on site.
Cirque du Soil's fully funded program walks up to 18 City of Yarra businesses, hospitality venues, retailers, offices, manufacturers, through a site waste assessment, tailored mentoring and a practical Circularity Action Plan, built around real opportunities in their own operations rather than generic circular economy theory. It's deliberately designed for time-poor owners who care about sustainability but don't have a dedicated staffer to chase it.
The program builds on Cirque du Soil's earlier work across Moonee Valley, Glen Eira, Parramatta, Murrindindi and even Tromsø in Norway, a body of work that's supported more than 500 business leaders in total. What that experience taught them: education-first models lose momentum before implementation ever starts. Businesses engage when they can see the specific issue in their own bin, not an abstract circular economy diagram.
Recruitment has taught its own lesson too. Even a genuinely free, valuable program needs real face-to-face trader engagement to be believed. Digital outreach alone reached 1,500 people; it took direct conversations to actually fill the program's 15 places so far.
The X-factor is the order of operations: real business, real waste, real savings, with the theory built around what's already true on the ground.
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