Future young leader Natalie Bell tackles the topic of plastic waste on farms at evokeAg

Future young leader Natalie Bell took the stage at this year’s evokeAg event to talk about Hylo Ag, a startup she hopes will bring an end to unnecessary plastic waste by giving a second life to livestock tags.

Speaking at the event, Ms Bell said she was excited to be at evokeAg talking about her topic with many other agricultural innovators.

‘I’m very inspired, because there are people from every corner of the world as well as the best of the best in Australia. It’s exciting to be in the same room as all of those people,” she said.

“I’d never thought my first time at evokeAg would be as a founder.”

Ms Bell, who lives on a sheep property in New South Wales, founded Hylo Ag to help the livestock industry be more sustainable in a way that wouldn’t be costly for primary producers.

“I’m passionate about finding ways to be sustainable that make good business sense,” she said.

“Doing right by the environment is so important, but so is running a profitable business and avoiding complex process.”

In her presentation, Ms Bell said her interest in recycling farm waste was sparked after talking to a farmer who drove into town in two-hour round trips just to offload all the plastic waste from his farm.

She said this led her to realise how few recycling resources were available in regional Australia.

“With waste management options being few and far between in rural communities, it’s no surprise that ear tags end up in the landfill,” Ms Bell said.

Hylo Ag, which is currently in its proof of concept stage, will be a digital platform where users can register prepaid postage labels and send their used or leftover tags to be recycled.

From there, users can track the amount of plastic they send through the system.

Ms Bell said they are currently looking for business partners to help move the concept through to development, but once the startup is up and running, anyone with access to the internet and a post office can get on board.

“Anyone can use Hylo Ag . . . whether you’re an abattoir removing tags before processing, a feedlotter replacing them at induction, or a farmer with leftovers from this year’s drop,” she said.