BRAD Price Change Update

The price of BRAD is increasing. Here’s why.

From July 1 2026, the cost of recycling your tricky items with the Banish Recycling and Diverison (BRAD) program via our pre-paid postage system will be increasing. We’re making these changes to ensure the longevity of the BRAD program, and ensure you still have an accessible way of recycling tricky items no matter where you live in Australia for years to come. 

Where we started

The Banish Recycling and Diversion (BRAD) program started in our founder Lottie’s backyard 6 years ago, as a way to give back to our community who were purchasing sustainable products and plastic-free swaps from the Banish marketplace and doing their part for the planet. 

 

Pictured: Lottie and the very kind friends she roped into helping her. 

 

Since then, it has rapidly grown from 3 boxes and some friends in backyard, to an overflowing Kennard’s Storage unit in Waterloo, to an abandoned Priceline pharmacy at Central Station to our current Sustainability Hub. We now receive an average of 80 boxes a day, sent in from all around Australia. 

 

Pictured: The storage unit days!

We are powered entirely by community. Volunteers devote their time to helping us sort your items into each of their streams for recycling here in Australia, and we are entirely self-funded with no government support. Since 2020, we’ve recycled 33.5 tonnes of plastic and kept over 8 million items out of landfill. 

These small changes to some of our BRAD recycling options are to ensure that we can continue to do this work, and allow every Australian to have another option than just the red bin.

Pictured: The Banish Sustainability Hub at Central Station in Sydney.

 

The current deal

Currently, we have several different ways of recycling with BRAD.

Digital BRAD Label - where you print the label yourself at home or take it to the post office to be attached to your box for you. These are available in both 2kg and 4kg options.

Printed BRAD Label - where we print the label for you at our Sustainability Hub in Sydney, and mail it in an envelope to you. These are available in both 2kg and 4kg options.

BRAD Drop Off - You can also do a BRAD Drop Off, and bring your items to our Sustainability Hub in Sydney. 

BRAD Mega Box - For offices, schools and communities, we also offer 15kg BRAD Mega Boxes with custom reporting.

BRAD volunteers can recycle their BRAD items free of charge in exchange for their time sorting the hard-to-recycle items we receive each week from around Australia. 

What will be changing?

From July 1 2026, the cost of certain BRAD recycling labels will be increasing. 

• The 2kg BRAD digital label will be increasing from $15 to $18
• The 2kg BRAD printed label will be increasing from $18 to $23
• The 4kg BRAD printed label will be increasing  from $33 to $35

The price of 4kg digital labels, BRAD drop offs and BRAD Mega Boxes remain the same. 

This means that you can still recycle the same amount for the same price ($30 for 4kg), we’re just asking you to send in bigger boxes less often. 

Plus, our BRAD Drops Offs at our Sustainability Hub in Sydney are still our cheapest and most sustainable recycling option at $10 per 2kg. If you live in Sydney or near the Hub, we encourage you to make use of this option, not only for your wallet, but for the reduced carbon emissions that come with postage. 

BRAD vouchers will also be phasing out, with all current vouchers still valid until December 1, 2026. From Jan 1 2027, you will no longer receive a voucher with every BRAD box or drop off. 

Why is this happening?

There are several reasons why we’ve had to make small price increases to some of our BRAD recycling options, but all of them are to ensure that this independent, nationwide recycling program can continue to run. 

 

Longevity

We haven’t increased our prices for BRAD boxes since BRAD first started 6 years ago. In that time, Australia Post - which forms the basis of our accessible, nationwide postage system, has continued to raise its prices, at the cost to small businesses across the country and social enterprises like ours. Recently, these have only been heightened by the impact of global conflicts on the cost of fuel, which Australia Post is also passing on to its customers. 

In order to still offer this service to you and thousands of other households across Australia, we have to ensure that we can sustain it. 

Pictured: The wall of 'to-sort' BRAD boxes in our Sustainability Hub. It goes down, then goes back up again!

 

It costs us money to make sure that these products are recycled responsibly, on-shore in Australia (just like council rates for your bins at home). 

We do not make money off your blister packs, beauty products, plastic tubes, beauty products, and other hard-to-recycle items - we pay our speciality recyclers to recycle them. We are not the producer of these items that is taking responsibility for the waste that we created, we’re taking on the problems of other industries and fixing them ourselves while we still have time. 

 

While we create recycled products out of the bottle top lids, the sale of those products is what helps fund the cost of recycling too, along with a portion of your BRAD label costs. Most of it, unfortunately, covers the costs charged to us by Australia Post. We offer other services like workshops, activations and events, and run educational programs too, which all help keep BRAD running. 

Banish is also a social enterprise, meaning we exist to solve an environmental problem and put people and our purpose first, but we function as a business. In order to do what we do, we have to cover our costs, including our machinery that helps us create recycled products, our team that keeps us running, and our dedicated space that allows us to do it all. 

In order to continue creating a positive impact for people and our planet, some of our prices need to rise. 

 

Independence

A lot of people are surprised to discover that Banish and the BRAD program are both entirely independent. We are self and community-funded. We are not financially supported by any level of government via grants or ongoing funding, despite offering a nationwide recycling service accessible from every local council in Australia. 

 

Pictured: Corporate volunteers helping us sort through plastic bottle top lids. 

 

We have never received private, seed or venture capital funding, or asked our community to become investors in the business in order to ensure we can continue running. We’ve done it anyway.

In 2024, we won the Westfield Local Heroes community grant, which allowed us to start our online schools education program, providing curriculum-aligned environment and sustainability education for school students ages 6-18 across NSW. 

But the BRAD program is entirely funded by us and our community, and the environmental education work we are able to do with corporate and community groups because of your support. 

We are doing what councils, federal government, plastic producers and others won’t pay for, because we know it is important to our community, and is making an impact for our planet - and that we don’t have time to waste waiting for others to figure out a solution. 

Lasting change

These changes are also purpose-driven. Ultimately, our mission is to encourage people to make sustainable swaps and reduce their reliance on plastic as much as possible. While this can be difficult in a consumerist society, and some items like medication packets are unavoidable, we ultimately want BRAD to help encourage behaviour change.

For example, we ultimately don’t want to continue recycling single-use coffee cups forever and ever; we want to empower you to switch to a reusable coffee cup. We have an accessible solution for you on the odd occasion you forget your cup, but we want using the BRAD program to also be a reminder of the things in our own lives that we can change and make an impact in seemingly small ways, that add up in impact over time. 

Pictured: The drop off wall at the Sustainability Hub in Sydney. 

We also want to encourage those who live in neighbouring suburbs to the Sustainability Hub in Sydney, or who travel past Central every day to work, to consider dropping off their recycling instead, and forgoing the carbon emissions that come with unnecessary postage. 

While these price changes are to ensure we can keep running, they’re also to continue nudging us and you in the right direction- towards real, lasting change. 

Why are you phasing out vouchers?

Our business model has changed from when Banish first started 8 years ago. 

Currently, we provide vouchers ($10 or $15) every time you recycle with BRAD. This originally started as a way to incentivise sustainable behaviour change, as the vouchers received for recycling tricky items could then be used in our store, which sold Aussie sustainable products and plastic-free swaps. 

In 2024, we closed down the marketplace side of the business to focus on education and recycling, and double down on behaviour change.

As Lottie was writing her book, she realised that as much as we were providing sustainable swaps, we were inadvertently encouraging people to buy more with the way we ran the business. While we love our partnered Australian brands, we knew education was the most important piece of the puzzle when it came to sustainability, and sustainable living was about simplicity at its core. 

Pictured: Some of the BRAD Recycled Range, made from bottle top lids. 

Now that we sell BRAD and partner recycled products, we only want you to be intentionally purchasing things that you truly need and will treasure for a long time, not just simply to reach a minimum purchase threshold. 

You will still receive a voucher for recycling with BRAD until June 30 2026, and your existing vouchers that you’ve received for recycling with BRAD in the past are still valid right now. All vouchers will expire on December 31 2026, giving you a good 6 months to shop with intention, either with us or our partner sustainable-living brands. 

 

The value of BRAD

When BRAD first started, no one else in Australia was offering a way for everyday people to recycle a lot of the items we accept. Since then, more and more recycling options have continued to pop-up - in stores, local councils and with other businesses - making specialty more accessible. 

If you've been to our Sustainability Hub, you'll know that we will always encourage you to use whichever recycling options are most accessible to you. We only ask you to do your research, and use services that you trust. 

The value of BRAD lies in our committment to the planet over profit. We only partner with vetted on-shore, Australian speciality recyclers to ensure your items are not shipped off and processed elsewhere. Everything is turned into something new, right here in Australia. If there is not complete transparency from a recycler about how and where items will be recycled, we do not partner with them. 

Unlike other programs, BRAD allows you to recycle all kinds of tricky items, all in one place - no matter where you live in Australia. Accessibility is not limited to whether your council has decided it's worth paying for a third-party service, or whether a brand considers its commitment to sustainability still cost-effective or not. The things you send to us are always able to be recycled through BRAD, in one box, with on-shore recyclers you can trust. 

You can find the full breakdown of how and where your items are recycled here, and in each Impact Report we release. 

 

What happens now?

Nothing is changing today. These changes don’t come into affect until July 1 2026, with vouchers still valid until December 1 2026. 

Right now, BRAD labels still cost what they did 6 years ago, and your existing BRAD vouchers are still valid for use online, in-store at the Sustainability Hub or with our partner sustainable living brands. 

If you’re on our mailing list, we’ll let you know closer to when the prices are set to change and your voucher is set to expire. You can sign up here to make sure you receive updates. 

If you live in Sydney or near the Hub, we encourage you to drop off your future BRAD boxes when possible, as the price of drop-offs will not be increasing and remains our cheapest and most sustainable option.

For those who mail-in from around Australia, it is still the same price for you to recycle - we’re just encouraging you to send in bigger boxes less often. 

For those who use our printed system, you can access this too. Digital labels can still be printed for you if you don’t have access to a printer - simply show your email and your BRAD box to the staff at your local post office and they will do the rest for you. 

Thank you.

BRAD has grown into something even bigger than we ever could have imagined. We have made such a huge impact for our planet in such a short amount of time, and are constantly blown away by the power of a dedicated community of people who care about the same things. 

We simply wouldn’t have been able to achieve everything we have without your support. While we know these changes may come as a shock or a disappointment to some of you, we hope you understand that they are being put in place to ensure the BRAD program you know and love is around for a long time, and can still help thousands of Australian households just like yours to keep plastic waste out of landfill. Whether you’ve just started recycling with BRAD, or sent one of the first 3 shoeboxes to Lottie’s backyard way back when, thank you - we’re incredibly grateful. 

Find out more about our BRAD Mega Boxes here. 

Get involved and volunteer with BRAD in Sydney here. 

Got questions? Email us at hello@banish.com.au