Showing how sustainability can work

When Brad and Narelle Scott shelved their high powered corporate jobs in Brisbane to travel around Australia they had no idea it would lead to a whole new chapter which saw the couple running what is now an award winning business with a focus on sustainability.

As reported last week, Robe-based business Transmutation added the 2024 Telstra Best of Business Awards with the Embracing Innovation Award to its South Australian award, showing what can be achieved when you turn your passion into a career.

Brad was working in logistics and feeling burnt out and Narelle was also looking for something new.

“When Narelle suggested selling everything and to take off in a van I thought she was joking and she wasn’t,” Brad said.

But with their kids having left home and both looking to a change in careers that’s exactly what they did, heading off in the fifth wheeler in 2016, they turned their hand to providing short term management relief for hotels, caravan parks and pubs.

“We did that for 18 months and then started to reassess what we were doing and decided just to find somewhere we haven’t been before to settle in for a while,” Brad said. “We decided to buy a shed and then figure out what we wanted to do. We had never heard of Robe but it looked like a nice place so we went and got the shed.”

It was in the early days of settling in at Robe that Brad had somewhat of an epiphany.

“I realised I hadn’t ever really used my degree in chemistry and so I started playing around with what is now our business,” he said. “I never really planned to start a small business but that is what happened.”

Brad knuckled down and embarked on his own research and development, turning plastic waste into homewares, bowls and platters onsite.

“It was a lot of trial and error but I was lucky in one way that things did happen quite quickly,” he said.

Brad created the machines he used to create the products and it all started with him turning bread tags into bowls and as the range expanded, it saw Transmutation add a retail showroom to allow them to stock quality products from circular economy artisans including hats and boots from truck tarps, yoga pants from regenerated fishing nets, water bottles from sugarcane and bags from inner tubes.

Proof Brad and Narelle created something special is their collaboration with Country Road Australia – the major fashion giant selling Transmutation products in store.

The business also has formed a partnership with the charity Aussie Breadtags for Wheelchairs.

Given how quickly the business grew, taking stock of what they were looking to achieve was made possible through the comprehensive process they had to go through as part of the Telstra Awards.

“It was the most involved thing I had ever done,” Brad said. “Each stage got progressively more detailed. It was looking at the why, where and how of our business – things we hadn’t really asked ourselves, or had time to ask ourselves, and we had to find the answers to those questions.”

And all this came at a time when the business had reached somewhat of a crossroads – did they want to stay small or did they want to scale up.

“We decided to go for broke,” Brad said. That meant attracting investors and taking a leap of faith.

He said the whole journey since driving out of Brisbane with the van had been challenging but he was thriving in this new chapter.

“Working in the corporate sector is quite a safe environment and when we left Brisbane we felt quite exposed – no one knows who you are and what you’ve done,” Brad said. “But in the end it has been quite liberating to think about different things and I have personally enjoyed opening up my mind.”

What he has enjoyed is also being able to show recycling can be the basis of a viable business and that there is a lot of upside to living regionally as opposed to in a major city.