A 28-year-old Sunshine Coast woman has done the seemingly impossible and funded the cost of her dream wedding dress, all through the Containers for Change scheme. Leonie Starr’s dedicated recycling habits over a six month period netted her $5000, recycling more than 50,000 containers at the TOMRA Recycling Centre in Kunda Park. The news comes as TOMRA also announces Queenslanders have returned a milestone 100 million containers through its 10 Recycling Centres in the same period.
President of TOMRA Collection Solution Ryan Buzzell, applauded Leonie and Queensland’s efforts, just six months into the scheme. “Leonie’s story is a perfect example of how small actions every week can make a big difference – both to your wallet and to preserving Queensland’s world-renowned environment. To thank Leonie for her outstanding contributions to the Containers for Change scheme, TOMRA presented her with a $1000 cheque to put towards the flowers for her wedding later this year.”
Since the introduction of the Containers for Change scheme in November 2018, Queenslanders have saved more than 440 million containers from littering their environment or ending up in landfill. TOMRA’s total of 100 million is the equivalent of planting more than 1.2 million trees, or taking 214,000 cars off the road, or saving 816,963 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
With more than 82,000 installations across more than 60 markets, this Norwegian multi-national corporation captures 35 billion used containers each year through their reverse vending machines. These materials are then recycled and turned into new bottles and cans, waiting to be recycled once again. Queensland has been gifted with ten of these state of the art centres, designed to handle exchanges of all sizes. Whether it is a small scale civilian deposit, or a large bulk business exchange, these centres allow customers to claim their refund in cash, vouchers, or ePayment.
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