A small marker, a bigger rethink: Panorama’s reusable lot-marker system

Sometimes innovation begins with a very ordinary frustration.

At Panorama Portarlington, our standard corflute-style lot markers had become part of a wasteful cycle. Strong coastal winds could loosen them and send them across the development. Others were bent, flattened or driven over during the everyday movement of builders, trades and deliveries. Every few months, we were ordering and installing another round.

The result was poor value, more work and the risk of loose material becoming litter on land we care deeply about.

Those who know me well know I struggle to accept “that’s just how it’s done” as a final answer. I believe there is a practical solution to most everyday problems if we are prepared to get curious, ask questions and try something different.

So I did.

Corflute can be recycled, but the pathway matters

To be fair to corflute, the material itself is not automatically destined for landfill. It is generally made from polypropylene, a recyclable plastic. The challenge is that corflute signs are not generally accepted in Australian council kerbside recycling, and specialist recyclers require the signs to be clean and separated from stakes, metal and other contaminants.

That means good end-of-life intentions need a deliberate collection and specialist-recycling process. A sign that blows away, is crushed into the ground or is placed in general waste does not reach that pathway.

For Panorama, the better question was not simply, “Can this sign be recycled?” It was, “Can we stop treating the whole marker as a short-life product in the first place?”

A local conversation led to a better design

I took the problem to Think Fencing, a Portarlington manufacturer we have also partnered with for fencing within Panorama.

Think Fencing designs and manufactures recycled-PVC fencing products at its Bellarine facility on Portarlington Road. The company has worked with CSIRO on technology to analyse and reuse complex PVC waste streams, an important step because PVC can be difficult to recycle when its composition varies.

Its wider recycling work helps give difficult materials another life. Pharmacycle, for example, separates the plastic and aluminium from used medicine blister packs, with the recovered plastic transported to Think Fencing’s Portarlington facility for use in products such as fencing and decking. Think Manufacturing has also worked with reclaimed flooring and other PVC waste streams.

I asked the Think Fencing team whether they could produce custom-length rails for a completely different purpose: lot markers.

They were wonderfully helpful and open to the idea.

The result is a custom recycled-PVC rail measuring 1.2 metres long and 150 millimetres wide. Its three hollow cores allow steel pickets to pass through the rail and anchor it firmly into the ground. We then apply a custom lot-number sticker to the face.

It is a simple design, but it solves several problems at once.

Solid, visible and designed for another life

The new markers are sturdy, highly visible to people driving onto the lots and made for long-term outdoor exposure. They look neat and consistent across the development, rather than temporary or disposable.

Most importantly, they are reusable.

When a release changes, the sticker can be gently warmed with a hairdryer and removed. A new lot label can then be applied, allowing the rail to be used again in a future release. At the end of its useful life, Think Fencing says its PVC products are recyclable, supporting a more circular approach to the material.

That is the real win for me: we have moved from repeatedly replacing an entire marker to replacing only the information on it.

The numbers also make sense

The installed cost of our previous corflute lot sign was $38.50 including GST. The installed cost of the new reusable marker is $52.90 including GST.

That is an additional $14.40 per lot upfront.

In return, we have a stronger, better-looking marker that can be relabelled and moved into another release rather than purchasing a completely new marker every quarter. There will still be a small cost for a replacement sticker and relocation, but the main marker is retained.

For me, that is better value measured across the product’s useful life, not just on the day it is installed.

Why local matters

Working with a Portarlington business was important too.

Supporting local manufacturing helps sustain local capability, skills and jobs. It also shortens the distance between idea, prototype and finished product. We could meet, test the concept and create a custom solution with a team that understands the Bellarine environment.

Our partnership with Think Fencing extends beyond these markers to fencing within Panorama. It reflects a broader principle behind the development: where we can, we want to work with local businesses and make choices that support the community we are building within.

This may be a small innovation in the context of an entire residential development, but small systems are repeated many times. When we challenge one wasteful cycle and replace it with a durable, reusable alternative, the impact accumulates.

Sometimes the answer is not a dramatic new invention. Sometimes it is simply refusing to keep ordering the same disposable solution, and getting curious enough to design a better one.

Learn more about Think Fencing: https://thinkfencing.com.au/