Lisa and Adrian Saunders
A Story of Tenacity
Driving by the piles on the side of the road, Lisa and Adrian started that familiar complaint, "Surely some of that stuff has value. It's ridiculous to be thrown into landfill..." At that moment, they decided to stop complaining and do something. Setting aside their careers, Lisa and Adrian started Arnies Recon, a free electronics and appliances recycling social enterprise.
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Three and a half years later the Arnies Team had saved over 6000 tonnes of electronics and appliances from landfill. But, the operation was too expensive and too hard to run. Exhausted and unable to continue, they made the difficult choice to close Arnies.
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Lisa and Adrian were still committed to recycling, so taking the lessons learned from Arnies, they opened Whirl Recycling. It's still a social enterprise, still free, but Whirl taps into the power of community and partnerships to keep electronics and appliances out of landfill. It's a much more sustainable model and easily be applied to other markets.
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