Couple pay for $10k wedding through Return and Earn
Ellie Toohill and Darren Auth-Jones scoured the streets for rubbish to pay for their engagement party, rings and wedding. Now they’re chasing 750,000 cans and bottles for a house deposit.
NSW
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One thing Ellie Toohill knows Darren Auth-Jones won’t do on their wedding day is lose his bottle.
For the thoroughbred horse trainer and truck driver fiance have spent the last year and half scouring the state’s streets, parks and landfills for discarded empties in return for refunds and have amassed $10,000 to fund their wedding in Cessnock in August.
“People call us stingy and tight and say they’ve worked hard for their wedding but we do too, at night we pick up what people throw away and we’ve become so good at finding rubbish it’s paid for our engagement party, our rings and our wedding next year,” said trainer Ellie, 24.
“I just think it’s stupid to pay for weddings, why would you when others can do it for you?’
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The drive to make cash from containers has become so addictive that the pair from St Marys in Western Sydney have designed a granny stick equipped with tongs to speed up their new hunt for 750,000 cans and bottles they will need to reclaim the cost of a deposit on a new home.
Horse truck driver Darren, 39, has mastered the look he gives Ellie to jump out of the car to grab a rogue can or bottle on the kerbside when he spots one.
“I don’t stop at anything, I go to racetracks, landfill sites, parks. I rummage inside bins; if I collect 200 bottles, that’s $20 in my pocket,” he said.
“Ellie now knows the look, if I flash it and we’re stuck at traffic lights, she’ll jump out and grab the bottle or can and ace back in the car. No stone gets left unturned.”
Retired Benedictine monk Terry Roll, 84, has caught on to the money-making scheme designed to improve kerbside municipal waste collection he drives 103 kilometres from his home on Woongarrah when Balmain rugby club play at Leichhardt to fill his UTE with waste, making $200 a time.
So far cashing in truckloads of beer cans and bottles have paid for him and his wife to join a $7000 cruise to Noumea in the South Pacific and Mexico and a $5000 trip to Singapore in May.
“And all because of rubbish,” he chuckled, adding, “What would a retired man be doing anyway? At least I’m keeping active.”
The NSW container deposit scheme, Return and Earn, began rolling out across NSW on December 1, 2017.
Drink container litter makes up 44 per cent of the volume of all litter in the state and costs more than $162 million to manage.
Return and Earn is the largest litter reduction scheme introduced in NSW, and will help meet the Premier’s goal of reducing the volume of litter in the state by 40 per cent by 2020.
In 2016–17, Australia generated 67 million tonnes of waste per year, sending 55 per cent to recycling, three per cent to energy recovery and 40 per cent to disposal.
Municipal waste from households and council operations makes up about 21 per cent of Australia’s annual waste generation and 17 per cent of national recycling.
In 2017, China announced restrictions on imports of recycled materials.
The restrictions, which took effect on December 31, 2017, and March 1, 2018, ban the importation of 24 waste types and limit materials such as paper, cardboard and plastics and one per cent for metals.
Most NSW beverage containers between 150ml and 3L in volume are eligible for a 10-cent refund with more than 500 vending machines and depot sites set up by operator, TOMRA Cleanaway.