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Return and Earn for WIRES

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

is estimated that more than 160 million drink containers litter our streets, beaches, waterways, and parks in NSW every year. Help clean up the bottles, cans, and cartons in your neighborhood and raise money for wildlife. WIRES volunteers work on the front line every day rescuing wildlife who are found choking on, ingesting, or entangled in rubbish.

WIRES wildlife rescue is currently listed on all RVM in NSW, but only for the next two months.

Through the Return and Earn scheme, anyone who returns an eligible drink container to an approved NSW collection point will receive a 10-cent refund. When you are returning containers you can choose to allocate your refund as a donation to WIRES, thus supporting our work saving sick, injured, or orphaned wildlife.

Find your nearest RVM & Start Returning and Earning for WIRES now!

With 900 RVM’s in place Return and Earn is already doing amazing things to help wildlife.

The overall kerbside recycling rate for beverage containers in NSW prior to the introduction of Return and Earn in NSW was 33 per cent. Since the introduction of Return and Earn, the total rose to 61 per cent by the end of March 2018, representing 196 million containers recycled that would otherwise have ended up in landfill or the litter stream. 

As people start to see the real impact the scheme is having on litter reduction and landfill, it is expected that more and more people will embrace it from an environmental perspective, in addition to the 10-cent refund opportunity.

A CLEANER STREAM

You may not know that the design of the Return and Earn scheme in NSW ensures high quality recyclable material with low levels of contamination are captured for recycling.

Return and Earn uses an internationally acclaimed collection and sorting system and waste management logistics to ensure a continual stream of high quality recyclables.

What’s more, most of the plastic, glass and aluminum containers collected are re-processed in NSW and Australia, with the remaining balance sold into the export market.

The containers returned via Return and Earn are much cleaner and less contaminated, compared to those generally returned through other recycling channels, this leads to the material recovered being of a higher quality for on-sale and reuse. 

Many of the beverage containers recovered end up as bottles and cans again in a closed loop recycling process.

Most 150ml to three litre beverage containers are eligible for a 10 cent refund provided they are made from glass, plastic, aluminium, steel or liquid paperboard. 

Containers should be empty, uncrushed, unbroken, and have the original label intact.

We will be posting about our Return and Earn donation partnership on our facebook and instagram pages and your help sharing the information to your communities will help encourage everyone to Return and Earn.