After 14 months of rifling through recycling bins in Melbourne’s inner north, Sayo Leahy has gained first-hand knowledge of her neighbours’ failings when it comes to rubbish disposal.
“People in this area really love take-away chicken,” she says, grimacing.
Armed with red heavy-duty, elbow-length rubber gloves, Leahy regularly contends with unsightly non-recyclables in her hunt through kerbside recycling bins for empty cans and glass bottles.
Sayo Leahy dropping off her latest haul at the Coburg North Container Deposit Scheme depot.Credit: Wayne Taylor
“Nappies, lots of plastic bags, greasy pizza boxes,” she says. “And chicken. Just so much chicken.”
Since Victoria’s Container Deposit Scheme was launched in 2023 to tackle the state’s recycling crisis, the 38-year-old Reservoir woman has been one of tens of thousands of individuals, charities and community groups who have used the quickly expanding scheme to supplement their income at 10¢ a container.
For Leahy, it has been a lifeline. She lives with the anxiety disorder agoraphobia and has struggled to maintain employment due to mental health struggles.
She is now collecting thousands of bottles and cans a month from residential areas, bars, cafes, caravan parks and events to supplement her disability pension. It helps her pay for expensive psychologist appointments and afford fees for playing ice hockey, which has aided her mental health while she completes a master’s degree in social work.
“I wouldn’t be alive without this rubbish,” says Leahy, who jokingly dubs herself a “canbassador” who earns a “bincome”.
She collects not just for herself, but on behalf of charitable organisations including animal shelters. Leahy documents her journey on Instagram under the handle “OnlyCans”. She has raised about $15,000 so far.
She has painted wheelie bins with pink leopard-print lids and leaves them at friends’ house parties and willing businesses. She returns days later to pick up the treasures in large sacks and boxes in the tray of her 1990s ute.
She concedes she has had some negative feedback to her street rubbish trawling. “People have called me names like ‘desperate scavenger’ and said I don’t respect people’s privacy. But I never go onto people’s property – I only go through bins once they are on the kerb on council property.”
In the main, she says people are happy and willing to help her, particularly those who remember Victoria’s cash-for-cans scheme in the 1980s, which stopped in 1989.
“Older people are like, ‘I used to go to the pubs and do that! It’s so great! I’m glad you’re doing it,’” she says.
“I’ve got a lady in Fitzroy, she’s so sweet. She left a note on her bin last week for me saying, ‘There’s a whole bucket of cans for you just behind my letterbox. Come get them.’”
Leahy’s financial goal for 2025 is to replace her car – on its last legs with a blown head gasket– with a second-hand van that can fit wheelie bins standing up. A bigger and more reliable vehicle would be a game changer, allowing her to collect large amounts from festivals and events in country Victoria.
Like many rubbish hunters, Leahy can’t help but pick up bottles and cans even in her downtime.
“When I go for a [roller]skate down at Albert Park, I’ll have my bag and I’ll just be cleaning up the park while I skate around,” she laughs.
It’s a similar obsession for 15-year-old student Max Andrighetto, who says his collecting can at times annoy his family.
Year 10 student Max Andrighetto and his schoolmates used the proceeds of their collection efforts last year to fund vegetable gardens and environmental projects at Kew High School. Credit: Wayne Taylor
“I was at the Kew cemetery with my sister, and underneath one of the graves there was this bottle filled with a yellow liquid. I really wanted to take it, but my sister was arguing with me [saying it was disgusting]. And I’m like, ‘I gotta get that 10¢!’ ”
The year 10 Kew High School student has led a group of up to 20 of his fellow students for the past 12 months in using the container deposit scheme to fund vegetable gardens and environmental projects at their school.
They have set up red Container Deposit Scheme bins around the school grounds, and parents drop off used bottles, cans and Tetra packs at the school to contribute. During Friday lunchtimes the “Eco Warrior” team carry sacks of containers to a nearby collection point at a supermarket and collect their cash.
They collected 7000 items last year and the money raised bought compost tumblers, worm farms, gardening gloves and seedlings. This year they hope to fund flower planting around the school and bird baths.
This year Andrighetto, who has given talks to students at other schools on how they can use the deposit scheme to fund their projects, wants his crew to target cans and bottles washed up along Melbourne’s rivers and creeks.
“I swear those areas have more cans than even the rubbish bins do,” he says.
Victoria was the second-last mainland territory to adopt a container deposit scheme. It mirrors the schemes in NSW and South Australia but is not yet as robust as the Queensland scheme, which now accepts wine and gin bottles.
Jim Round is chief executive of VicReturn, the state agency co-ordinating the scheme. He said there had been far quicker take-up than the agency had anticipated.
About 20 million containers had been returned each month since the launch, but in January that number surged to 30 million, and the 655th drop-off point has just been set up, in Federation Square.
Round said the scheme did not formally endorse people going through other people’s bins, and instead suggested Victorians follow the etiquette that applies in South Australia, where people leave their cans and bottles in a box on the street for people who want to collect.
“If people don’t want to engage in the scheme, or don’t have the time – give it to someone else [who needs it] and let them pick it up,” he says.
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