Tim, you saw the opportunity early.
The initiative has grown.
The opportunity is now much larger.
When we met at WARRRL's office in July 2025, you understood and loved the idea immediately. We appreciated that — and we kept building. Ten months on, what was a strong proposal has become a national movement, and we're reaching out again because Western Australia still has the opportunity to lead it.
This page is a briefing — not a debate. It outlines where the platform sits today, why the participation gap still requires a behavioural solution, and why a WA partnership remains the most strategically natural place to start.
The Current Reality
Where the scheme stands — and what the data shows
65.6%
Current recovery rate
FY2024-25 Annual Report
85%
Statutory target
Set by WA government
19.4%
Gap to close
~533M containers per year
+0.6%
Year-on-year growth
Infrastructure maturity is real
Infrastructure is mature. The participation gap is behavioural.
WA now has 303 refund points, a well-established app, Drop and Go services, and one of the most accessible CDS networks in the country. Eight in ten adult Western Australians have already participated. The remaining gap is not an access problem — it is a participation motivation problem. Your own 2025-2027 Strategic Plan identifies this directly: embedding behaviour science principles and driving out-of-home participation are the named next levers. That is precisely what we are built to deliver.
Return for a Cause — Australia's largest ever social and environmental impact experiment.
The 10c Recycling Games has evolved into Return for a Cause — a nationally framed movement that connects container returns to real prizes, community causes, and measurable environmental outcomes.
Every container returned stays out of landfill. Every return contributes to social and environmental causes. And the engagement mechanics — leaderboards, team challenges, prize pools, community impact tracking — create the sustained participation motivation that infrastructure alone cannot generate. This is the behavioural layer the CDS ecosystem is missing.
Return for a Cause
Turn your 10c refund into real social and environmental impact.
Environmental impact
Every container returned is one less piece of litter and landfill — measurable recovery at national scale.
Social impact
A percentage of returns flows to community causes — built into the participation itself, not bolted on.
National significance
A named national experiment with real prizes, real players, and real stories — the narrative power recycling alone cannot generate.
Your own strategic plan is our brief.
WARRRL's 2025-2027 Strategic Plan identifies the participation gaps we are built to close. These are direct quotes from your published plan — alongside what we deliver against each one.
WARRRL's Strategic Plan
Achieve 85% container recovery rate (Strategic Plan 2025-2027 Primary Goal)
Our solution
Drive the remaining participation gap through behavioural incentives, gamification, and community engagement — the tools infrastructure alone cannot deliver.
WARRRL's Strategic Plan
Drive 'out of home' participation — hospitality, retail, events, mining (Strategic Plan 2025-2027, Pillar 2c)
Our solution
Target precisely these sectors through team-based participation, business challenges, and event activations. Out of home, 10c feels like a burden — but points toward a life-changing prize feel like an opportunity worth holding onto.
WARRRL's Strategic Plan
Embed behaviour science principles to deliver increased participation (Strategic Plan 2025-2027, Initiative 2a)
Our solution
Behavioural science is the foundation of our model — gamification, variable reward schedules, social proof, streaks, and community identity.
WARRRL's Strategic Plan
Compelling member experience and strong social impact brand (Strategic Plan 2025-2027, Values and Pillars)
Our solution
Every participant can support a cause, earn rewards, and contribute to measurable community and environmental outcomes — social impact embedded by design.
WARRRL's Strategic Plan
Increase participation incentivisation and harness loyalty for Containers for Change brand (Initiative 2b)
Our solution
Prize draws, leaderboards, charitable giving, team competition — all driving loyalty and repeat behaviour within the existing C4C brand.
Why 10c fails out of home — and why points don't.
The Inconvenience Barrier
Carrying a container while out and about is a friction-heavy behaviour. The only reward is 10c — and the perceived inconvenience of holding onto that container easily exceeds that value. Behaviourally, it feels like it costs you more than you get back.
10c
feels like it costs $10
The Opportunity Shift
When one container equals 10 points and you're competing for life-changing prize draws, the calculus flips entirely. You're no longer getting a measly 10c — you're investing in a win. The container becomes an active asset worth taking home, not a burden.
Points
are a game currency to win
The Result
Participation in hospitality, retail, workplaces and event spaces rises — not because the 10c refund changed, but because the meaning attached to the action changed. That is the behavioural gap the existing scheme cannot close on its own.
Same container.
Completely different behaviour.
A clean division of responsibility.
The 10c Recycling Games is complementary infrastructure — not competitive infrastructure. WARRRL continues doing exactly what it does. We add the participation engine it feeds.
WARRRL
Continues doing exactly what it does now
- Operate the physical refund point network (303 locations)
- Process returned containers through refund point operators
- Manage logistics, processors and recyclers
- Pay refunds, manage FRS contributions
- Maintain compliance, fraud detection, scheme integrity
- Run the Containers for Change brand
The 10c Recycling Games
Owns and operates the engagement layer
- Build, own, and operate the consumer engagement platform
- Design and run all behavioural incentive mechanics
- Manage the national prize pool and draws
- Run social and environmental cause programs
- Drive participation among those not motivated by 10c alone
- Bring more containers to the network — WARRRL processes them
No operational burden. No systems change. No new team required.
The CDS ecosystem's strongest schemes operate the physical network with precision. The 10c Recycling Games adds the engagement layer they don't need to build — driving more returns to the existing infrastructure. The division is clean, complementary, and entirely additive.
Tim, you said yes in the room.
Here's exactly what you said.
On 2 July 2025, we met face-to-face at WARRRL's office. The following are your own words from that meeting — listed here because they matter, and because they directly contradict the email that followed six weeks later.
You said this in the meeting
"The Recycling Games would absolutely help Containers for Change reach the demographics they can't reach — the ones that are disengaged."
You said this enthusiastically, unprompted — explicitly confirming the gap our initiative and platform fills.
You said this in the meeting
"We only have 25% of participants with a member number — this would help us get more sign-ups."
You identified member number registration as a key gap. The 10c Recycling Games requires account creation by design — it solves this problem directly and permanently. You also noted that this would be a key driver for board approval.
You said this in the meeting
"We could fund an initial prize pool rollout to drive behaviour — run it as a pilot model."
You offered WARRRL's own funding for a pilot. This was an explicit offer of partnership, not a tentative interest — you proposed putting scheme money behind it. It would be unclaimed refunds in actual fact.
You said this in the meeting
"It's a yes from me — but I'll need to speak with the team first."
Your closing words. A clear personal endorsement. What followed: a team member was not supportive, you went overseas for a month, and when you returned — the answer had changed to no. The email arrived 14 August 2025.
What happened between the meeting and the email
The Decline Email — 14 August 2025, 1:24 PM
Tim Cusack → Matty Gee
Subject: RE: Recycling Games - pleyr-x - Community Impact
"Thank you again for thinking of Containers for Change and for sharing your vision. We'll keep your details on file and will be in touch if the timing and focus align in the future."
Tim — the time is now. Your statutory duty as a scheme coordinator demands it.
WARRRL's mandate under WA legislation is to recover eligible containers. At 65.6% — 19.4 points below the 85% statutory target — the scheme is not meeting that mandate. Every month of delay is ~44 million more containers going to landfill. "Timing and focus" is not a future consideration. It is today's legal obligation.
"Not Invented Here" Syndrome — and what it costs
There is a well-documented organisational behaviour pattern known as Not Invented Here (NIH) Syndrome — a cognitive bias where organisations, or individuals within them, reject external ideas, solutions, or innovations simply because they didn't originate internally. It is driven by pride, fear of loss of control, and a desire to protect internal authority. It has nothing to do with whether the external solution works. It has everything to do with who thought of it.
Read the full definition on Wikipedia →Tim, this isn't about you — and we think you already know that
The pushback in that meeting didn't come from you. It came from Tasha Sheldrick — WARRRL's Chief Growth Officer, who was also in the room.
Based on public professional records, Tasha joined WARRRL as Chief Growth Officer in early 2025 — meaning she had been in the role for less than six months when we sat down together on 2 July 2025. She brings extensive experience leading brand transformations and market expansions across global and local markets — having worked with major brands including Nestlé, The Walt Disney Company, Kraft Jacobs Suchard, and Coca-Cola, as well as Australian businesses like Bannister Downs Dairy, Mrs Mac's, and Kailis Bros. She holds an MBA and is clearly a capable and experienced professional. She was new to a senior C-suite role in a public-purpose organisation — and within months of arriving, she would have been building her growth strategy. Her plan. Her vision. Her reason for being in the role.
And then we walked in. With a fully-built, externally-developed behaviour-change strategy that addresses the exact problem her title exists to solve.
Tim, put yourself in her position. Less than six months in. A mandate to drive growth. An outside team arrives with a finished answer to the question she was hired to answer. Saying yes to that, in that moment, is genuinely difficult — not because the idea is wrong, but because of what it implies about the role. That's not a character flaw. It is one of the most human and well-documented responses in organisational psychology. We understand it. We're naming it because you deserve to see it clearly.
Tasha's objections in the room — and why each one doesn't hold
"Kids collect containers for pocket money — and charities use it to raise funds."
Tasha raised this as a concern that the Games might interfere with kids or charities. It's a fair instinct — but it misreads how the platform works. Participating in the 10c Recycling Games is entirely optional. Anyone — a child, a charity, a community group — can return their containers and collect their 10c refund exactly as they always have. Nothing changes. The Games is an additional layer for those who choose to engage. A kid collecting for pocket money is not affected. A Men's Shed running a charity drive is not affected. Not one container, not one cent of existing refund value is redirected without a participant's active choice.
"We're a public scheme — we can't be associated with a lottery."
With respect, this objection mischaracterises what the 10c Recycling Games is. This is not a lottery. A lottery requires payment to enter. Here, the 'entry' is returning a container that would otherwise go to litter or landfill. That's a trade promotion — a proven, legally-distinct category: you provide something of value (a used beverage container), and in return you receive a chance to win. Woolworths does this. McDonald's does this. It is a behaviour-change incentive backed by decades of behavioural science and commercial precedent.
And on the broader point about charity raffles and prize-based fundraising: those have been used by Australian charities since the 1850s — tracing back to ancient Roman and Han Dynasty precedents. Raffles under lottery permits are run by every charity, sporting club, and school in the country. Nobody questions those. The distinction being drawn against us is not a legal or ethical one — it is a framing preference.
If the objection to the "lottery" framing persists after understanding that it is a trade promotion — one designed to divert 4 billion containers per year away from litter and landfill — then we'd gently suggest the objection has more to do with protecting the existing strategy than protecting the scheme.
The strategy that replaced ours — measured by its own results
65.6%
FY2024–25 return rate
(when we met)
~66%
Projected FY2025–26
(WARRRL's own forecast)
+0.4%
Total growth across
an entire financial year
Tasha's strategy — donations partnerships, digital transformation, and internal growth initiatives — produced a projected 0.4 percentage point increase across an entire year. At that rate, WARRRL reaches the statutory 85% target in approximately 47 years. The environment cannot wait 47 years. The strategy had its chance. The results are now in. Less than half a percentage point in twelve months is not a growth strategy — it is a flatline.
This is not about blame — it's about what the data demands
We want to be explicit: we are not criticising Tasha as a person or as a professional, in fact, we respect her. The NIH response in that situation is deeply human, entirely understandable, and something that plays out in organisations everywhere. She was new. She had a mandate to prove. She had a strategy to execute. It's not malicious, it is normal, and now it's time to work together.
Your job as CEO Tim, is to recognise when that dynamic is happening and to look past it to the results. The question was never whose idea was it. The question has always been: does it work, and does WA need it? You already answered that question in the room. The containers have been answering it every month since.
The best CEOs don't protect internal strategies from external challenges. They protect the mission — and they are willing to be challenged on whether the current strategy is the right one. That's the decision in front of you now. Not whose strategy gets implemented. Whether the result — the environment, the statutory mandate, the containers — gets what it needs.
The pattern at WARRRL — as it stands
You said yes in the room. A newly-appointed team member pushed back to protect her mandate. You were absent for a month overseas. The answer returned as no. The external solution — which you personally validated, which aligns with the scheme's own published strategy, and which addresses a gap the scheme cannot close internally — was declined. Not because it doesn't work. Because it wasn't invented here. The strategy that replaced it produced 0.4% growth in a full year. History has a clear record of what this pattern costs. The containers don't stop going to landfill while the internal conversation continues.
The CDS is just the entry point.
This is a multi-billion dollar circular economy behavioural incentive play.
We've spent ten months building the case for the CDS — because it's the proof of concept, the entry point, and the simplest version of the argument. But it would be a mistake to think that's all this is.
The same incentive model — the same behavioural engine, the same points system, the same prize pool — is already being designed to cover every recoverable material stream in Australia. E-waste, batteries, scrap metal, soft plastics, white goods, textiles. Every item an Australian household accumulates and eventually discards. Every one of them has a wholesale commodity value. Every one of them has a participation gap caused by zero consumer incentive. That is precisely where we operate.
Mining the Modern World's Riches from our homes
E-waste, batteries, rubber, metals, plastics, textiles — billions in recoverable value hiding in plain sight in cupboards, draws, sheds etc. We're extracting it, returning it, and funding the future with it.
Discover Urban Mining
Designing a Waste-Free Future with circularity
Moving beyond 'take-make-dispose' to a regenerative system where every resource that can be recovered, is. The circular economy isn't just an environmental framework — it's an economic one.
Explore CircularityTim — what this means for you
Western Australia is not just a CDS jurisdiction.
It is the first state in a national circular economy transformation.
WARRRL's job is to manage the container deposit scheme — and that job is important. But the organisation that partners with us on the CDS becomes the first to participate in a platform that will — by design — expand to every recoverable material Australians generate. The relationship we are proposing for the CDS is not a one-off engagement. It is the entry point into an ecosystem that has no ceiling.
This is not a company asking you to let us add a gamification feature to your app. This is a circular economy infrastructure play at national scale — and we are building it whether any individual coordinator joins or not. The question is whether Western Australia leads it, or watches other states go first.
We're not waiting for anyone this time.
We're launching.
We are actively presenting to multiple states simultaneously. WA is on the table. Queensland is on the table. We're not holding the launch for any single decision — we're moving forward with whoever is ready to lead.
When the countdown reaches zero, we go public — launching the Expression of Interest for Australia's Largest Ever Social & Environmental Impact Experiment with or without a state partner locked in.
Time Until Media Submissions
We're not applying pressure, we're just keeping a tight schedule.
This countdown exists because every single day this is delayed, almost 11 million beverage containers end up as litter or in landfill. This isn't about urgency for urgency's sake — it's about accountability to the environment and to every Australian who deserves better.
Tim — you already know the answer.
You said it yourself, in that room.
"It's a yes from me." Those were your words on 2 July 2025. Not polite interest. Not cautious openness. A yes. The data was compelling then. It is more compelling now. The gap to 85% hasn't closed. The containers keep going to landfill.
We're not asking you to take a risk. We're asking you to follow through on a decision you already made — one that your own strategic plan, your own performance data, and your own words on the day all support.
The numbers don't change while we wait
~44 million containers to landfill every month. ~$4.4M in forfeited refunds. Every month.
~333 million containers littered and going to landfill every month across Australia. ~$33M in forfeited refunds — over $400M every year. Over 4 billion containers lost to litter and landfill annually. Not one single behaviour change program running anywhere in the country.
Tim — before you reply, please read these in full
These pages were built specifically around the data you need to see. Data on the audit page is sourced from WARRRL's own reports and public records.
WILL WARRRL LEAD THE NATION OR FOLLOW WHEN OTHERS DO?
Want to understand why this works?
We've mapped the exact neurochemical systems that make the 10c Recycling Games one of the most powerful drivers of human behaviour ever designed into an environmental program.
Important Legal Disclaimer
Please read and acknowledge these terms before continuing.