How Yackandandah is keeping clothing local and out of landfill

Describe the project you’re leading

The Circular Textiles Yackandandah Pilot has established a small-scale, community-led textile recycling system in regional Victoria. It creates a local pathway for unwanted clothing and textiles by collecting and sorting donations through the Community Centre’s Op Shop, then mechanically shredding non-resaleable items for reuse as stuffing in locally made products such as pet beds, cushions and draught stoppers.

By keeping collection, processing and reuse within the local area, the pilot demonstrates how local micro initiatives can reduce textile waste sent to landfill, avoid long-distance transport, and create practical next markets for recycled textiles. The project is designed as a low-cost, replicable model that can be adopted by other small towns with existing Op Shop and community infrastructure.

Tell us more about Stone Hill View

Stone Hill View is an Australian country lifestyle brand and maker business based in Yackandandah, north east Victoria. It’s grounded in a belief that well-made, functional products connect people to the simple, tactile joys of regional life. The business designs, manufactures and sources items that are beautiful, durable and genuinely useful, including recycled wool tartan blankets, canvas goods and homewares, with a strong emphasis on durability, heritage craft, and thoughtful use of materials. This ethos aligns directly with the pilot’s focus on giving discarded textiles a second life through practical, locally made products.

Tell us about your project partner and what they do

We’re partnering with the Yackandandah Community Centre (YCC), which operates the town’s Community Op Shop and provides the trusted, everyday interface between residents and the recycling system.

Textiles enter the project through the Op Shop, where donated clothing and household textiles are already being received as part of normal community activity. YCC staff and volunteers assess each donation, setting aside items suitable for resale so they can continue circulating locally. Textiles that cannot be resold are diverted into the recycling stream rather than landfill, or to cities for processing. These items are bagged using a simple bag-swap system and stored onsite, ready for collection.

Stone Hill View regularly collects the filled bags and transports them to the processing location, where the textiles are mechanically shredded and prepared for reuse. The shredded textiles are then incorporated into locally made products such as pet beds, cushions and draught stoppers, closing the loop between donation, processing and reuse.

YCC’s role is critical to the success of the pilot. They bring an established volunteer base, strong community trust, and proven systems for handling large volumes of donated goods.

What was your motivation for leading this project?

My motivation comes from a long-standing commitment to using recycled materials in our own products at Stone Hill View. Over time, we also saw that our customers were genuinely interested in this story and receptive to the idea that recycled materials could be both durable and desirable.

At the same time, conversations around town highlighted the pressure on our local Op Shop. The Yackandandah Community Centre receives large volumes of textile donations, and many items can’t be resold. The existing options are limited: send them to landfill or pay for organisations to transport the material hundreds of kilometres away for sorting or disposal. Neither option sat well with me.

What became clear was that this was a problem we could take responsibility for locally. As a community, we already had the donations, the volunteers, and the making skills - what was missing was a simple, practical way to connect those pieces. This project emerged from the belief that regional towns should be empowered to solve their own problems, rather than exporting them elsewhere.

I was also motivated by the potential for this model to extend well beyond Yackandandah. If small towns across Australia adopted similar community-led approaches, the collective impact could be significant.

What aspects of the project are you most excited about?

What excites me is the idea of small communities taking responsibility for their own waste and actively solving problems that affect them.

I’m particularly excited by the way the project brings a local business and a community organisation together in a practical, complementary partnership. Rather than waiting for local government or external systems to step in, we’re being proactive. The Community Centre provides the trust, volunteers and collection point, while Stone Hill View provides the processing capability and a clear reuse pathway. Together, that collaboration turns an ongoing challenge into a shared solution.

Another exciting element is the potential for this approach to be taken up by many other small communities around Australia. The model is deliberately simple and affordable, which means it doesn’t rely on large-scale infrastructure or ongoing public funding. Seeing similar initiatives emerge in other towns, each adapted to local needs but based on the same principles, would demonstrate how collective action at a local level can have a national impact.

What have you learnt from this project so far?

In the first three weeks of operation, around 130 kilograms of unsaleable textile waste has been shredded and reused as stuffing in Stone Hill View’s Pet Pillows, which are our pet beds.

The most significant learning to date has been the sheer volume of unsaleable textiles generated at a local level. Even in a small regional town, the amount of material requiring a reuse pathway is substantial. This has reinforced that any textile recycling initiative must have a clear, immediate use for material from day one. Without a defined end market, stockpiles would accumulate very quickly.

At a national level, this project will provide evidence that distributed, community-led recycling systems must be designed around end use, not just collection. The pilot demonstrates that small-scale infrastructure can divert meaningful volumes of textile waste when recycling is embedded within a local manufacturing ecosystem.

The key lesson for national coordination is that effective systems will be built from many local solutions operating in parallel, each with a clear reuse pathway, rather than relying solely on centralised processing facilities.

What guidance would you give to other local communities thinking about similar projects?

Start with what already exists in your town and build from there. Most communities already have trusted collection points, such as Op Shops, and motivated volunteers who care deeply about reducing waste. The key is not to create a complex new system, but to connect existing pieces in a practical way.

One of the most important lessons from this project is to think about end use from the very beginning. Textile volumes accumulate quickly, even in small towns, so it’s essential to have a clear, reliable pathway for recycled material from day one. Whether that use is local manufacturing, partnerships with makers, or other applications, demand must be in place before collection scales up.

Strong partnerships are also critical. This project works because a community organisation and a local business each focus on what they do best. I would also encourage communities to start small, test the system, and let it grow organically. It’s better to have a modest setup that works well, than an ambitious model that is difficult to sustain.

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^{Photos courtesy of Stone Hill View.}