Wheeling a recycling bin to the curb can be a mundane weekly chore for many Australians, but for residents in remote regions across outback Queensland, those mainstream recycling services do not exist.<\/p>\n
To combat the growing need and demand for recycling in the state’s North West, a not-for-profit organisation hit the Gulf of Carpentaria’s red dirt streets to do it themselves.<\/p>\n
Gulf Containers for Change (C4C) is a container-refund scheme, collecting cans and bottles from residents and businesses for recycling for a return of 10 cents per item, which is reinvested into the community.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Millions of containers have been collected by the Gulf Containers For Change depot. (Supplied: Robbie Katter)<\/p>\n
The scheme diverted 4 million bottles and cans from landfill in 2024.<\/p>\n
And now, Gulf C4C is expanding its 270,000-square-kilometre patch to service Mornington Island, one of the most isolated regions in the country.<\/p>\n
Lauren Christian, an executive general manager of COEX, the company facilitating Gulf C4C, said the expansion was environmentally and culturally significant.<\/p>\n
Partnering with Indigenous rangers on the island, containers will be collected and taken to the local barge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They will then be shipped to the nearest mainland town, Karumba, for recycling.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mornington Island will now have a Containers for Change service. (Supplied: Mornington Island Life)<\/p>\n
Ms Christian said expanding the scheme to the island of 1,200 people had the potential to save thousands of containers from litter and landfill, and the 10-cent-per-item refund would be invested back into the community.<\/p>\n
“The rangers have been really passionate about keeping plastic bottles and cans out of the environment,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We have a number of really engaged community advocates who understand the benefits of recycling and the benefit from an economic, a social and an environmental perspective.”<\/p>\n
Cleaning up country<\/p>\n
Gulf C4C director Annie Cork is based in Normanton, a small town 500 kilometres north-east of Mount Isa, and loads up her truck every day, ready to collect thousands of containers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Annie Cork and her husband Joseph run Gulf Containers for Change. (Supplied: Annie Cork)<\/p>\n
“Unlike probably most of the other depots, we go out and do household collections,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got two trucks and two trailers \u2026 there’s a huge amount of kilometres \u2014 as you could imagine \u2014 that we’d cover.”<\/p>\n
Ms Cork said the scheme ticked all the boxes for the Gulf.<\/p>\n
“You’re not only cleaning up country, but people are getting paid,” she said.<\/p>\n
“It’s cleaned up towns immensely. It’s generating quite a bit of revenue back into the economy.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The collection has proven popular with residents. (Supplied: Robbie Katter)<\/p>\n
“We do a massive amount of cattle stations as well, the ones that are not a million miles off the road, and they’re really appreciative of it.”<\/p>\n
Garbage in the sticks<\/p>\n
At Stirling Station, 100 kilometres north-east of Normanton, the only waste-management system was a personal landfill built on the property.<\/p>\n
But Gulf C4C has changed that.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Workers at Stirling Station collect bottles and cans to fund their end of year event. (Supplied: Cheryl Ryan)<\/p>\n
“[Containers] would just go into the dump, because we’d have nowhere else to take them,” station manager Cheryl Ryan said.<\/p>\n
“We just can’t go and do what they do [in the city] when someone collects it. It’s all up to us to look after it.<\/p>\n
“Our workers put all our tins and plastics in a bin and our bottles in a separate one, and then we collect them in the bigger bins, and then we take them when someone’s going into town.”<\/p>\n
But for the workers on the station, it is about more than just recycling.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Containers for Change is the only available recycling scheme in many rural towns. (ABC Western Queensland: Grace Nakamura)<\/p>\n
“We have all our young workers and we have a social club, and we thought it was a good way to get a little bit of money to take them out fishing on a boat at the end of the year,” Ms Ryan said.<\/p>\n
“It’s a benefit. You’re helping the environment by recycling \u2026 and it’s just that bit of money in your pocket as well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wheeling a recycling bin to the curb can be a mundane weekly chore for many Australians, but for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[84373,64,63,75,84371,84370,84374,84372,3810,84368,84369,128,20266],"class_list":["post-119417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-10-cent-recycling-refund-queensland","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-gulf-c4c","tag-gulf-containers-for-change","tag-managing-rubbish-on-remote-station","tag-mornington-island-recycling","tag-recycling","tag-remote-communities","tag-rubbish-collection","tag-science","tag-waste-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}