Darling Downs residents urged to review recycling habits

Darling Downs residents have exchanged more than 160 million containers for refunds, returning $16 million to residents, charities, community groups and businesses.

Darling Downs residents have been urged to review their recycling habits, after new research revealed 45% of Australian councils had seen an increase in contamination of kerbside recycling bins since COVID-19.

Planet Ark’s Beyond The Bin report released last week during National Recycling Week also showed that soft plastic contamination in kerbside recycling bins was the most common issue faced by councils who offered the service.

Ken Noye is CEO of Container Exchange, the not-for-profit that operates Queensland’s Containers for Change container refund scheme.

Mr Noye urged all Queenslanders to pay close attention to how they disposed of their recyclable waste.

“We have seen Queenslanders embrace the Containers for Change scheme and earlier this month we celebrated our second birthday and the return of the 3 billionth container through the scheme,” he said.

“The success of the scheme has shown that people are willing to change the way they look at waste and we hope this flows on to ensuring they are recycling the right items in the right way.”

The scheme has contributed to a 54 per cent decrease in beverage container litter in the Queensland environment in its two years of existence.

In that time the Darling Downs region has exchanged over 160 million containers for refunds, returning $16 million to residents, charities, community groups and businesses.

“Our scheme has set an ambitious target of recycling 85 per cent of all beverage containers sold in Queensland by July 2022,” said Mr Noye.

“This is a job for everyone – to get behind the scheme and ensure they are correctly disposing of their containers.

“We need to keep our environment clean by recycling through our scheme Container Refund Points (CRPs).

“You can also recycle by using a yellow top council recycling bin.

“Disposing of containers in general rubbish bins sees them go directly to landfill, adversely impacting our environment.”

For more information on Containers for Change and how you can cash in when you recycle, see https://www.containersforchange.com.au/.