Harper Sercombe
Resource recovery company Repurpose It won 2023’s best business as well as the sustainability and environment award at the Whittlesea Business Awards.
Repurpose It was established six years ago as Australia’s first construction and demolition washing plant facility.
Chief executive Georg Hatzimanolis says it “was awesome,” to be recognised at the inaugural awards ceremony.
The Repurpose It plant can wash contaminated waste and soils that were once destined for landfill can be reused as clean building materials for infrastructure builds within the community.
“We’re a resource recovery business, so for us it’s about taking unwanted material that people would typically refer to as waste and transferring it into a valuable resource,” Mr Hatzimanolis said.
In 2022 the company launched an organic processing facility that takes food and garden organic waste from Whittlesea to create quality soil for the community.
“Sustainability is something that’s core in everything we do, we’re about preserving resources and we walk the talk in our operations in every manner, in our energy consumption, in our resource use and our resource recovery rates,” he said.
“So to be a part of a business that has a really positive outcome more broadly not just to our local community but the local environment is something that makes us really proud.”
Repurpose it has been operational in Epping, with community being a key pillar of the business.
“Our business was born and bred in the City of Whittlsea, this was our first operating site out here, we’ve always really embedded ourselves with the other local businesses in the community and with the City of Whittlesea itself,” he said.
Other winners included Epping North’s Brewer Sisters as the best start-up business and Thomastown’s LINK Community and Transport for the best community contribution.
