Eight years in, a grassroots recycling program has become a beacon of what communities can do
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
When Banish first appeared eight years ago, it was less a business than the journey of one person’s frustration with what to do with her waste. Banish’s Sydney-based founder Lottie Dalziel was searching for clear information about sustainable living and ways to convert that knowledge into action. What began as an attempt to fill a gap in Australia’s limited and flawed recycling landscape has grown into a movement reshaping how thousands of households and companies — like Ethinvest — think about waste.
Those early years were uncertain. Building a sustainability education platform from scratch meant navigating a space that barely existed when the work began. There were moments when Dalziel’s project seemed unlikely to survive. But, propelled by determination and often sheer stubbornness, Dalziel has built an organisation that is now one of Australia’s largest recycling programs.
On its eighth birthday, Banish and its BRAD program have recycled more than two million items from 10,000 households and offices participating. In 2025 alone, BRAD has seen 9.5 tonnes of waste — including 3.45 million blister packs — diverted from landfill.
What changed the trajectory of Banish, Dalziel says, was not a sudden windfall or institutional backing, but a community willing to step in long before the idea made sense. She says it’s the people she works with, including dozens of volunteers, that keeps her going.
“So much of what we've built at Banish has been powered by our community,” Dalziel says. “People who showed up, literally, to my backyard to sort blister packs and bottle top lids by hand, then to the storage unit to unpack BRAD boxes, and give their weekend mornings to a cause they cared about. That's not a small thing. That's the whole thing.”
The past year brought another milestone for Banish: a permanent home, expanded in-house production, and investment in people and machinery that allow the organisation to operate where few others tread – finding solutions for hard-to-recycle materials like bottle top lids, beauty products, toothpaste tubes and coffee pods. From these, Dalziel makes and sells products from the hand-sorted waste like gardening hand tools, earrings, laptop stands, serving platters and pot plants.
Dalziel says no other company or organisation is doing what Banish does, “which means we're writing the guidebook as we go. It's messy, it's hard, and I wouldn't trade it.”
“People ask me all the time how I stay positive with the state of the planet, Dalziel says. “The answer is always this community. Banish exists to turn knowledge into action and BRAD is proof that when enough people take that action together, the impact is undeniable.”
Find out how you can participate in Banish’s BRAD recycling program, volunteer and buy recycled products that support Lottie and her team to keep tonnes of waste from our landfill every year.
