Kris Spann On Accelerating Peer-To-Peer Recycling & Creating Impact In The Circular Economy
Kris Spann is co-founder of Bin Bypass, a Brisbane-based Social Enterprise fabricating public space recycling infrastructure to assist state container deposit schemes in diverting recyclable containers from landfill.
A graduate of QUT's Business Management Program, Kris was President of a Sydney Chamber of Commerce for 5 years, where he refined his understanding of main street activations, public space democratisation and tactical urbanism.
In this role Kris spearheaded a project to install the City of Sydney's first parklet in 2015 and used the learnings from this project to partner with local architects to create a suite of 4 specially designed relocatable parklet products. His proficiency with bringing innovative products to market stems largely from his time running some of Sydney's premier shared creative workspaces. In particular, as Managing Director of MakerSpace & Company, Kris oversaw a multi-department design incubator providing space, facilities and education to Sydney's maker community.
In his time at this facility, Kris worked with architects, industrial designers and fabricators to prototype products and iteratively improve designs. His commitment to sustainability saw Kris launch a recycled plastics department at MakerSpace & Co to help demystify and improve access to the process of using recycled materials in fabrication. In 2020, Kris’ business partner and friend Jonathan Gibson, approached Kris to help develop an idea he had been working on and the Bin Bypass design journey began. After some initial prototyping, Jonathan and Kris officially co-founded Bin Bypass in 2021, and are just about to bring an exciting recycled plastic product to market together in partnership with Containers For Change Queensland.
KRIS discusses his experience and insights into his work with for-purpose business, circular economy, and innovative design; and his key learnings from participating in the Elevate+ 2023 Accelerator program.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Eliana Cruz] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your passion for social impact?
[Kris Spann] - My most recent experience led me to do product design and bring products to market, in particular within the social impact space. I've always tried to do for-purpose businesses or projects; my first business was a coffee cart in front of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), at Parliament House in Brisbane, which was operating in a public space. I gained an understanding of university students and their passion for the future. I gained a good insight into what was coming and what the kids really cared about. I had my own dream at the time, to produce events for the music industry, which led me down to Sydney for 10 years. I sold the coffee cart, chased the dream and started a business called Guerillas Gigs, which was all about putting live music in public spaces with this idea of democratising public spaces. As a member of Gen Y (Generation Y), I believe public space is one of our best assets, because private space has been hard to afford or secure a lease on for long. A lot of my work has been in public space and trying to make these spaces work for the broader community, whether that's businesses, local residents, school children, or the elderly. My previous business was creating parklets which are public space seating areas that occupy car parking spaces. That was a mid-thirties punk project that turned into a very viable business during COVID-19, when all of a sudden, people needed outdoor spaces and we needed to space people out for outdoor dining. Cities realised the car parking spaces that took up so much of their outside area could actually be utilised in different ways. I got a bit lucky there on my journey. The other thing is my management of creative, shared work spaces. I had the pleasure, after doing Guerilla Gigs for a couple of years and getting projects off the ground there, to meet an investor who was starting a creative workspace. I´ve gotten to manage two workspaces, a coworking space in Glebe and MakerSpace & Company in Marrickville where I met a whole bunch of interesting people and purpose led businesses as tenants. Sendle was one successful business that came through our space. They do carbon neutral environmentally positive courier services. Basically, they do bookings for logistics and they wear their purpose on their sleeve. I saw how successful they became, as they expanded to America. It really opened my eyes to people's willingness and desire to take on products and invest in services from for-purpose businesses, and also the satisfaction of their employees to be working for a greater purpose. I've had a lot of exposure to excellent businesses, and I've never really enjoyed the not-for-profit model. I've run a Chamber of Commerce and been involved in many not-for-profit organisations.
I've definitely seen more outcomes from organisations that have focus on for-profit, who are trying to predominantly make their income from trade. That gives them the independence and freedom to make impact and change in the areas they're passionate about, not just tick boxes for councils and governments that want their own outcomes.
You can actually be the change by securing that income stream and having control over what you do with your money.
As Co-Founder of Bin Bypass, can you please share more about this enterprise, its purpose and the impact it’s generating?
My friend Jonathan Gibson (who couldn't be on the podcast today) approached me with this idea for a product to help people stop having to rummage through bins to collect containers and get the 10-cent reward. We were both living in Sydney at the time (Jonathan was living in Darlinghurst), and he had people on the regular rummaging through the street bins out the front and back of his house. We're friendly guys, and we chatted to a couple of them and heard about some of the injuries and inefficiencies of collecting this way. Additionally, they told us about some of the abuse they've had to deal with just to basically be doing what we all should be doing; recycling the products we consume. Bin Bypass is a simple attachment, Jonathan designed the initial concept, had it fabricated by another mate of his and brought it to me. It was originally like a collection shelf that sat on a bin, a wall, or a fence, and we turned that into a bit more of a globally unique product design. We went through a full-on design journey and ended up with a container deposit shelf that retro-fits existing street bins all across Australia, where there isn't currently an option for people to recycle.
UNDER 20% OF AUSTRALIA'S STREET BINS ACTUALLY ALLOW CONSUMERS TO DO THE RIGHT THING WITH THE CONTAINERS THEY ARE CONSUMING. THE REST YOU HAVE TO PUT INTO A GENERAL WASTE BIN, WHICH GOES TO LANDFILL OR LITTER and is OBVIOUSLY TERRIBLE.
Otherwise, you have to take it with you, and bring it back to your home to actually put into the recycling scheme. We've created a simple intervention, which is a product that just attaches to bins and allows people to leave their containers for others to collect and improves the safety, efficiency, and dignity for collectors, who can now take these containers and get a 10-cent reward for doing so.
What have some of the biggest challenges been on the Bin Bypass journey, and what lessons have you learnt as a result?
It feels like we've been designing this product forever, and the biggest lesson has been having patience and trusting in the design process. We could have gone to market very early. At Makerspace and Co, I had access to facilities, we were able to rapidly prototype, we developed a minimum viable product very early and we did some testing out in the street. Instead of turning a blind eye to what we saw during testing, we noticed limitations of the product and listened to feedback. Some of the feedback we got came from an Awesome Goundation grant of one thousand dollars we applied for but unfortunately didn't get. The feedback from one of the board members “was what's stopping me from screwing a shower caddy to a fence and doing the same thing?” It was a bit of an insult, a bit of a burn (laughing), but we took that on board and refined the design to make it look like a more considered product which was there for a specific purpose. We had a few overarching principles; we wanted it to work for the people that were collecting. We wanted it to be nice, smooth and easy to use. We also wanted people to be able to see the bottles and containers stored in it from afar, and make it easy to maintain so other stuff didn't get put in there, clog it up and make it a secondary bin. One of the things that also happened was we moved to Brisbane. Jonathan moved as well to Brisbane a year or so after, and we continued working on it. We had some meetings with potential clients, one being Containers for Change. In another throwaway comment in a meeting with a client, we got told if our product was made out of recycled products, it would just be next level. They put us in touch with a design group in South-East Queensland we didn't know about. I've made products from recycled plastic before; we had a recycled plastics lab in Makerspace and Co. I understood the process, but it's very challenging.
THERE'S A REAL NEED FOR AUSTRALIAN BUSINESSES TO MAKE PRODUCTS OUT OF RECYCLED MATERIALS, BUT THERE are REAL BARRIERS TO ENTRY, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE A START-UP OR BOOTSTRAPping LIKE WE ARE.
To go through the process and be guaranteed on the other side that you'll come out with a product that is fit for purpose and is able to be manufactured here in Australia is difficult. There's a lot of considerations when doing stuff with recycled plastic, and I was a bit worried. We had a meeting with the company Evolve Group, which is based in Crestmead in Logan. The lead designer, Jack Gurr, who we had an instant connection with, presented this awesome pathway, and we then had a lot of faith we could make a recycled plastic product. We once again went down the design wormhole, because we had a well-functioning, metal folded product at that stage. We haven't looked back since, because we've innovated, iterated and learned from our clients and held off from releasing the product. We've seen some products go to market around Australia, but we are very comfortable that the time we've taken and money we've invested to get to where we are now will allow us to have a bigger impact. This is because we've created a scalable solution that's much easier and safer to attach to a lot of different public infrastructure, such as upright poles. There were lots of different considerations to be made, and we now have this awesome impact component where we are using recycled materials to make our product. We are now not only improving access to revenue streams for people who need it and diverting landfill. There are obviously environmental benefits, but we are also reusing materials that would otherwise go to waste. The recycled plastic product we're bringing to market is going to be made out of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic, which is an industrial grade plastic. This is underground cabling (the conduits that cover underground cabling) which get ripped up out of the ground. They go to a facility in Queensland that repurposes and shreds them; and they'll be injection moulded into our product to make it super tough and ready to deal with everything that happens out there on the streetscape. It's very exciting!
THE BIGGEST LESSON IS REALLY TRUST THE DESIGN PROCESS, LISTEN TO FEEDBACK AND TAKE IT ON BOARD. I KNOW EVERYONE is ALways talking ABOUT creating a MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT, BUT I WAS TOLD PRETTY EARLY ON BY A MENTOR OF MINE THAT YOU WANT TO GET A MINIMUM LOVABLE PRODUCT, A PRODUCT YOU LOVE which TRANSCENDS ITS PURPOSE.
It should actually be something people feel akin to and get connected with. Fingers crossed that's the reaction we get when we go to market later this year.
Impact Boom is proud to be working with you on our Elevate+ Accelerator program. What are some of the key lessons from this program which would be valuable for other purpose-led entrepreneurs seeking to create an impact?
I am really happy to be part of the program. I feel very privileged to be learning from you, Sarah, Tom, and other facilitators who you bring in. It's been a great journey. As you mentioned, I did business a little while ago at QUT, and back then, ethics and environmental impacts weren't front of mind, but obviously that's changed a lot now. I've loved the program's practicality; being able to go through a 20 week process where each week you're actually learning something you can apply straight away is great. We came to the program with a product we were pretty happy with now; we signed a deal with our first client (Containers for Change) to help bring the product to market, so it's a genuine partnership with an industry body. We've always been for-purpose at the centre of what we were doing, but we'd never articulated that.
WHAT ELEVATE+ IS DOING IS HELPING US RESPOND TO the questions, “WHY DO WE DO THIS? WHO DO WE DO IT FOR? WHAT ARE OUR AMBITIONS? WHAT ARE OUR GOALS TO SCALE? HOW WILL THAT ACTUALLY HAVE ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL IMPACTS?”
Some simple things I wasn't across were the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We've now aligned with three of those goals, which is exciting because it makes you feel connected to a global movement. That's genuinely what social enterprise and impact is all about, it's empowering businesses to take on challenges in the world and do their bit, not through relying on the government to sort things out. We've set a goal during the Elevate+ program to get 10,000 of our products out there in the market by the end of 2026. This is really exciting and achievable; it looks like we will have 2,000 out there by the end of the next financial year, and then that will grow year on year. If we do that we will have provided $186 million in access to revenue for people who collect these containers. That's $186 million which will support sporting and cultural organisations that have these containers getting collected, and also it will support people marginalised or at risk who are going around and doing the hard yards for society and recycling. There's a real broken link in the chain when we talk about street and general waste bins in Australia. Our product helps to plug that. That aligns to SDG Number 8, which is Providing Decent Work and Economic Growth. We've also aligned to the SDG Number 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities through our landfill diversion. 10,000 units by the end of 2026 will have diverted 1.86 billion containers from landfill, and that is a modest estimation. That is based on our observations in the field of containers recycled each product, which is at least three containers per day. Some of the inner city tests we've done have seen three and four times that, because our individual units hold six containers each and people come and collect them quite regularly in the inner city. We can also have multiples of our product attached beside each other, on top of each other, or back to back on a pole, so we can have an increased capacity there. We've calculated our figures at three containers per day, per unit, and that's 1.86 billion containers collected by the end of 2026, which is pretty crazy. In Queensland alone, we currently leak (which is the technical term) 1.137 billion containers into landfill or litter per year; which aren't yet collected through the Containers for Change program. Containers for Change are currently recycling 62% of containers that enter the market, so it's a crazy statistic which is on all of us to address. That per capita, for each Queenslander, is 212 containers per person, per year that are landing in landfill or litter. It's up to all of us to do the right thing with those containers and take them to a recycling facility that can repurpose those at the end of their life. It's also up to councils, shopping centres, universities, and anyone who puts a bin in a public space to provide people with an option to recycle those containers. We've all got a role to play, and we're trying to help both sides of the situation. Those 1.137 billion containers, if you lined them up beside each other, would go across Australia from Byron Bay to Western Australia 18 and a half times. A local stat for all the Queenslanders out there, if you piled up all those containers, they would weigh as much as three gateway bridges. All the concrete in the gateway bridges you see, just containers in waste would weigh three times as much as that. Some epic statistics which are a little bit scary, but we have got so many great things in place to sort that out and we're all part of the solution. Containers for Change are doing an amazing job working with us and other partners to help sort that out. The other SDG we´re working on is Number 12, Responsible Consumption and Production. That goal involves us looking at our own manufacturing activities, and we've chosen to work with recycled materials. When we get 10,000 units out there by the end of 2026, we'll have recycled seven tonnes of materials that would be reused in our manufacturing. It's all very exciting, and the Elevate+ program has helped us to quantify that, set targets for our impact, and be comfortable with communicating those impacts. We're now about to revise our website to be loud and proud about what we're trying to achieve.
What are some of the key learnings from your journey you can share with changemakers looking to grow their impact?
When I used to have a coffee cart and I'd teach people how to make coffee, I wouldn't start with teaching them how to make a good coffee. I'd start with teaching them how to make a bad coffee. For me, how you make a bad business is by not focusing on the business. In social enterprises, we're all very passionate people wanting to make a change, and a lot of people solely focus on that purpose (which is very important, don't get me wrong). Some of the valuable things we learnt during the Elevate+ program is to focus on the business and basics.
TO BE ABLE TO HAVE THAT IMPACT, YOU HAVE TO GROW A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS AND YOU HAVE TO HAVE GREAT PRODUCTS AND SERVICES THAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT; THEN YOUR IMPACT WILL ORGANICALLY GROW WITH IT.
Keep that impact close to your heart and close to the centre of everything, but you have to build a business that competes equally with other solutions out there. If you're out there on the open market competing with other products, they may not be for purpose or may not have the impact you have. But if your product is not as good or better than theirs, and doesn't provide the clients with the solutions they're looking for, you're not going to achieve the impact you set out for.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently which are creating a positive social change?
There are so many just in our cohort of Elevate+ participants. I encourage people to come along and hear from them on our pitch night that is coming up on June 15th 2023. More broadly, there's a company I follow called Seabin; they're in a similar space to what we're doing but focusing on a different problem. They work on litter that is making its way into our waterways, and they've got this amazing solution they've developed. I think it was done in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Basically, they've started recently working with the City of Sydney and they've refined their model to be about impact measurements. They've got a product that helps to suck waste from the ocean and filter it for collection. They're also honing in on measurements and providing data and understanding around the problem. It has been really inspiring to watch their development, and they've got this equity crowdfunding campaign at the moment. You can become an investor in them right now, which is a really exciting evolution of business, where you can buy a percentage of businesses through equity crowdfunding. If you haven't heard of Seabin check them out for sure. I will also shout out one project from our cohort, which is using a similar style of problem-solving we are, and that is Save Our Supplies (Featured in Episode 394 of the Impact Boom podcast). Claire Lane is looking at recycling waste from hospitals and sending it to different markets where it's acceptable to use. I am very passionate about waste management and turning trash into a resource by giving it value. I really love what she's doing as well.
To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?
The best resource I've had has been surrounding myself with people who are better than I am. Usually this means older people, who I've always found more interesting on the whole than people my own age (but not always). People who are leaders in their own field I've learnt from, helped them, and joined in their solution. You get a deep understanding of how they actually execute something and realise their vision. There have been amazing mentors in my career so far, and my Co-Founder Jonathan has a whole different skill-set I don't have. Sometimes it is hard; you have to eat some humble pie and listen, which means shutting up and absorbing the situation. That's been really great in the Elevate+ program as well, hearing other people's stories, passion and how they're realising solutions. You have to be willing to come to the party, take on change and better yourself.
