Sustainability matters to our community and the team at Wingecarribee Shire Council’s Community Recycling Centre (CRC) strive to reflect those values by actively engaging residents with recycling. In recognition of their efforts, the CRC has been selected as a finalist in this year’s National Agsafe Stewardship Awards.
Agriculture is integral to the Southern Highlands community and economy, so it’s rewarding for our CRC to be nominated for exceptional achievements in the drumMUSTER Outstanding Collection Facility category. Drum MUSTER is a service that benefits both the environment and farming industry by providing reliable, cost-effective pathways for the recycling of eligible, empty AgVet chemical containers.
“In addition to providing centrally located drop-off point for residents to surrender a wide range of everyday household items for recycling, our CRC is a readily accessible collection facility for surrounding agricultural properties to surrender clean chemical containers,” says WSC Manager Waste & Resource Management, Clinton McAlister.”The containers we collect are ultimately recycled into re-usable products like wheelie bins, road signs and fence posts, of practical use to our local industry and community.”
Developed with the environment in mind, drumMUSTER is a National Stewardship program supported by AgVet chemical manufacturers and industry stakeholders, including member and farming associations, State and Local Governments. In partnership with our CRC, the program encourages industry to responsibly dispose of drums containing hazardous chemicals by ‘rinsing them out, rounding them up and running them in to their local collection point.
“drumMUSTER works hand-in hand with local Councils like WSC to establish collection facilities all over Australia and has recycled more than 40million containers to date,” Clinton explains. Clean, rinsed-out drums which have contained insecticides, herbicides or animal health products, can be dropped off at the CRC and are then collected by drum MUSTER.
A particularly important year to be nominated as a finalist, the 2023 AgSafe Awards celebrate 30 years of dedicated agriculture and veterinary (AgVet) Chemical Stewardship Programs and 25 years of the drumMUSTER recycling program.
A credit to our commitment to recycling, Wingecarribee Shire Council’s CRC is among just 46 nominees nationally, across all Award categories.
We wish our passionate recycling team, along with community members who have participated in this program, well for the Awards ceremony at the AgSafe Conference July 25-27, 2023.
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