Carshare offers interim recycling solution

Carshare offers interim recycling solution

A popular car-share company is working with the City of Melbourne to offer an interim solution to Victoria’s recycling crisis in September.

On September 17, GoGet announced that members of its service would be provided free-of-charge access to vans to transport their recycling to their nearest waste transfer centre.

GoGet Victoria and South Australia general manager Justin Passaportis said with approximately 15,000 members within the City of Melbourne, GoGet reached around 17 per cent of households in the municipality.

“We face a crisis with regards to recycling across Victoria. There’s been a shutdown of one of the major players in recycling and what that has meant is that city councils who were using this recycler is that their recycling is going to landfill,” Mr Passaportis said.

“It dawned on us that we have a very close working relationship with council because they help facilitate the provision of carsharing.”

“We have a membership base of tens of thousands of people across greater Melbourne who are engaged people and want to do the right thing about the environment, and we also have a network of vans, so we thought we were uniquely placed to do the right thing about the environment.”

The offer was also made available to members within the City of Port Phillip and City of Moonee Valley.

City of Melbourne councillor and chair of transport Nicolas Frances Gilley said the strategy combined two council-backed initiatives.

“As a council we support increasing the number of car share spaces in the city. Every car share vehicle removes nine privately owned cars off the road,” he said.

“Our community cares about reducing waste so this is a fantastic initiative that gives people more ability to take their recycling to a transfer station.”

GoGet and both local councils are members of Committee for Melbourne, a not-for-profit organisation with over 150 member organisations from Melbourne’s business, academic and community sectors.

The organisation launched a Melbourne 4.0 taskforce in 2016 to help prepare the city for an accelerating speed of innovation and disruption. One of the key agenda items is an ongoing transport taskforce.

Committee for Melbourne communications and stakeholder engagement manager Laura Melvin said GoGet had worked “tirelessly” within that space for an integrated and innovative transport solution.

Regular recycling pick-ups resumed in the City of Melbourne on September 23.

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