Posted by Ray Philp on Sep 01, 2021
Following a long wait for a reply from the Greenbatch Foundation Liquidators (CorCordis), an offer from Perth Rotarian and Rotary-Greenbatch Alliance chair David Wee was accepted for the remaining assets excluding some items that were still being contested. 
 
This allowed for Applecross Rotary to recover 50 x 240L bins that were purchased through a 'Communities Environment Program' (CEP) grant that was received in March 2020. The grant was to fund a Schools Recycling Program for the schools in the City of Melville delivered by the Greenbatch Foundation. 
 
Collecting 'grant' bins from previous Greenbatch premises
 
As we started to roll out the program the COVID pandemic lockdowns came into play restricting access to the schools for the rest of 2020.  A COVID lockdown at the start of the 2021 school year again deferred the rollout and we were finally able to deliver our first presentation to the Melville Primary School assembly on March 19. 
Ray Philp, Greenbatch presenter Rachael Thompson, Principal Betty McNeill, Melville Primary students
 
On the 22nd March the Greenbatch Foundation went into Liquidation.  This was due to a number of factors, however the COVID pandemic caused unexpected cashflow issues.  This was due to the cancellation of a number of planned public events that the Foundation was contracted to collect the eligible containers for refund as well as the difficulty in running the Container Refund Points.
 
Last week a small team of volunteers managed to clear the main building of most of the contents, move 20 tonnes of milk bottle HDPE and bottle lids, and remove over 10 cubic metres of rubbish from the site.  Also with the use of trucks supplied by AKA Events (Rotarian Mal Taylor), as well as the Applecross Rotary trailer and a trailer supplied by Ronald Bower, we were able to move over 250 bins to David Wee's factory in Welshpool in preparation to distribute to contributing Rotary Clubs.
 
Natasha Rogers (ex Greenbatch) is currently consulting with Western Australia Return Recycle Renew (WARRRL), the not-for-profit organisation created to set-up and run CONTAINERS for CHANGE (CFC)  in WA. WARRRL supports community groups like Rotary, Lions Clubs, schools etc with promotional assets and a community kit which will include collection bags, posters, bin labels etc is being produced.  Natasha will keep us updated.
 
WARRRL will provide white lids for our bins as well as new CFC decals.  They have started a marketing campaign directing people to look for bins with the white lid for their Containers for Change eligible items.
 
The following links are for all the socials to include on our Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin pages as required:
 
It was extremely sad to pull apart all of the great work of volunteers who set up the Mt Claremont facility to collect and shred plastic, and educate all ages on the need to reduce plastic pollution and give waste plastic a new life.
 
This was a fantastic project for Rotary's new area of focus: the environment.  It also had the potential for a new fund raising stream through the Containers for Change program.  This can still happen with new partners including WARRRL, and hopefully through the collaboration of Rotary Club's we can at least pick up the all important schools education program and work with other CFC Refund operators.
 
The following is a collection of photos to remind us what we have lost.