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Recycle & Reuse
Recycle your old bread tags
Bread tags are hard to avoid, but by simply collecting and donating them, you can help provide wheelchairs for some of the world’s most underprivileged people.

It’s all thanks to the Bread Tags for Wheelchairs project which sees the plastic tags recycled into products like bowls and serving boards and the proceeds of sales used to buy wheelchairs for disadvantaged people in South Africa.

The whole concept is the brainchild of retired South African nurse Mary Honeybun. Passionate about the environment and helping others she started the innovative recycling initiative in 2006. Some 15 years on and more than 800 wheelchairs have been funded for people whom otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford their own.

In 2019 Jenny Cooper a South African who had migrated to Australia started an Australian arm of the charity based in Adelaide.

In just two years Aussie Bread Tags for Wheelchairs has raised funds to buy 20 wheelchairs thanks to donations of more than 3 000 kilograms of bread tags.

It takes around 200 kilograms of bread tags to fund one wheelchair.

The tags are transported to Robe in South Australia’s south east- courtesy of a local trucking company that donates its services – where they are recycled in colourful products.

The recycling process takes around two hours as the bread tags are compressed and melted before being shaped into bowls and serving boards. It takes 1 870 bread tags to make one bowl.

Jenny Cooper - Bread Tags for Wheelchairs

We’re saving plastic from going into the ocean and landfill and raising money at the same time so it’s win-win really.

Anyone can drop their bread tags off at more than 500 collection points around Australia which are then sent to Adelaide where they are sorted into colour by volunteers. Our colour sorters are mostly elderly or people with disability so it’s also a community building exercise showing how something small can make such a difference.

The donated wheelchairs are changing lives.

They are very grateful to receive the wheelchairs with many not being mobile beforehand.

The whole thing has been extremely rewarding for me just seeing the response. I really didn’t anticipate that it would grow like this in such a short time.

You can help...

Drop your bread tags off at these local collection points:

  • Urban Upcycle in Geelong
  • Bakers Delight in Geelong West
  • Surf Coast Hearing Clinic in Torquay
  • Armstrong Creek East Community Hub

See a full list of collection points.