Bread Tags for Wheelchairs

by Jessie Warner

From reducing waste to providing wheelchairs – how collecting your bread tags can help fund wheelchairs for those in need. 

Don’t discard or lose the tag when you open a fresh bag of bread or potatoes – keep them and become a part of the wonderful community coming together to raise funds for those in need of wheelchairs in South Africa who are unable to buy their own. 

Bread Tags for Wheelchairs was born in 2006 when founder Mary Honeybun had retired from nursing but still wanted to help others. Mary was also passionate about the environment and was aware that a lot of people in need of wheelchairs in South Africa were unable to buy their own. As a result, Mary came up with the idea of recycling plastic to raise funds to buy wheelchairs and partnered with plastic moulding company, Zibo Containers. 

After a few years, Australians got on board with the program and started collecting tags. The tags would reach South Africa via post or by travellers bringing them along with them when they visited South Africa. In late 2018, Australia set up a national collection network with Jenny Cooper, a South African who had migrated to Australia in the 1990’s, taking the cause to social media. Today, there are 460 collection points all over Australia with 200kg of bread tags being recycled every month. 
How does it work?

The bread tags are given to recyclers who make a donation for the tags which in turn raises the funds for the wheelchairs. In Australia, our recycler is Transmutation who are located in Robe, South Australia. Depending on the recipient’s needs, the amount of bread tags needed to fund one wheelchair varies however it takes around 250 kgs of recycled bread tags to raise enough funds for an entry level wheelchair. As the bread tags are being recycled anyway, broken tags can be donated (but please clean any food residue off them!). Currently, Australians have donated a whooping 2657 kgs of bread tags to date! 

How can you get involved?
• Get social! To keep up to date with the bread tag community, like and follow them on Facebook: @aussiebreadtags , join the Aussie Bread Tags Collection Info Facebook group and ask to join the email mailing list by dropping a quick email to aussiebreadtags@gmail.com 

• Start collecting! Save all of your bread tags and ask friends and families to get on board and put their own aside for you. You can also visit local cafés, canteens and other places and get them on board to save with you! When you’re ready to send them in, drop them off at a collection point which you can find on the map or post them to P.O. Box 1164, Kensington Gardens, SA 5068. 

• Host a collection point – your collection point can be anywhere – a business, school, community centre, private home – anywhere people can drop their tags off. All you’ll need to do is have a container large enough to hold a lot of tags, print off some signage from their site and let the organisation know your location and contact name, email address and number. For privacy reasons, if your collection point is your personal home, only your town or suburb will appear on the map and list and people can contact you for your address. You’ll also need a way to get the tags transported to your nearest capital city – whether it’s on a trip with you, or you can work with other host points nearby to you. 

• Help transport the tags – As our beautiful country is so large, transporting the bread tags to Robe, South Australia is one of Bread Tags for Wheelchairs biggest challenges. Transport company HF Dicker and Son generously donate the transport of monthly bread tags consignments from Adelaide to Robe and those in the bread tag community also help with their own trips interstate and getting friends and family on board. If you are in the transport community, have any contacts who can help out or are making a trip to South Australia yourself with room for a couple of boxes, please let the organisation know. 
Looking towards 2021, National Coordinator for Bread Tags for Wheelchairs Jenny Cooper says “We have been overwhelmed by the growth in our program over the last year with more and more organisations and individuals collecting bread tags for us. It's great to see some bread producers introducing cardboard tags. But there are still plenty of plastic ones out there that need to be recycled, so let's do it!"

So next time you open up a fresh loaf of bread, why not put the tag inside of a jar and not only will you be recycling and doing your part to Clean Up, but you will also be helping someone in need receive a wheelchair that they otherwise would not be able to afford. 


Jessie Warner is a freelance copywriter from Queensland.

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