Victorians, including those in Wyndham have been busy returning containers, with more than 100 million containers returned through the container deposit scheme (CDS), pocketing more than $10 million in refunds in two months.
Environment minister Steve Dimopoulos marked the milestone on January 11, at the new Return-It depot at South Melbourne, and said CDS is a great initiative to get people recycling.
“It’s remarkable to see so many Victorians get involved in recycling, providing 100 million containers and counting for re-use in new products,” he said.
“[This is] instead of [the containers] going to landfill or ending up in the environment and harming our wildlife.
“We’re rewarding Victorians who do the right thing, reducing litter and making sure recyclable product don’t end up in landfill.”
The CDS is processing an average of about 10 million cans, cartons and bottles across the state every week, with Victorians returning an average of 129 containers per transaction.
The biggest day to date was Friday, January 5, with 3.18 million containers returned.
Mildura is leading the state in container returns having returned more than 4.1 million containers.
Melton has been Melbourne’s best-performing refund point, having returned 3.9 million cans, glass and PET plastics.
Of all the containers returned since the scheme commenced, aluminium cans have been the most popular making up 53 per cent of returns, followed by PET with 26 per cent and glass with 18 per cent.
Details: cdsvic.org.au.
