Containers for Change initiative – Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council video

[Andrew Beckett – Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council]

"It was when I was in a previous role for the Cherbourg Council, I was a project officer for community safety which was funded by Queensland government. Part of that was recycling for the community of Cherbourg. So, we utilised or repurposed some of the old sheds, where we're standing, in this area, to just have a go at doing a little bit of local recycling, and just testing out the theory and the mechanism.

"We knew absolutely nothing about recycling at the time, but that led to all the investigation that I do by traveling to Corindi, to another indigenous-owned and run recycling plant down in New South Wales. Locally, I knew of Bundaberg, Hervey Bay, Sunshine Coast, and I went and analysed a lot of their operations, just to investigate, to see how they all work and everything. I brought those concepts and ideas back to Cherbourg.

"We got a little bit of funding to buy some very, very basic equipment, which we still have on site. We've utilised some of it, or repurposed some of it. In that period of time, a lot has changed to where we're sitting right now, but I guess that's where it started.

"Cherbourg's got a population, I think at that time, it had about 300 homes. So there wasn't a great deal of material, but we all know, just general knowledge, that 80% of household waste is recyclable. And what does this region do in that regard? And what does Cherbourg do in that regard? Which led us to, "Well, let's have a go at it here first."

[Sean Nicholson – Economic and Community Development Manager]

"Recycling is important to most councils in Australia now, and at Cherbourg, we'd like to think that we lead the way with the Indigenous sector. We've developed this MRF here, which works for several councils, and processes waste on their behalf. We're very proud of this facility."

[Andrew Beckett]

"The process is, you have source material from those regional towns. They bring that to site from the curbside recycling, and it comes to us, the material recovery facility. It goes into our bunkers and we load that into our system.

"We have a number of workers on all the belt lines, which then flows into a screening machine that separates your papers and your fibers from plastics. And that goes onto another belt where they can sort out the different types of containers, like your HDPE plastics from your PET plastics, your aluminums and your steels.

"They are hand sorted into storage cages, and once those storage cages are full, you press a little button, it opens the door, and it lets it go up the belts into a baler. They squash up into blocks, we push the block out, we weigh it, and we stockpile it. When we hit 20–30 ton, we then look at what the market price is, and that gets sold on."

[Duncan Kerslake – Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council]

"It's been a long process for Cherbourg to get to this point. Obviously, the state government through the Department of State Development, have been big supporters of this approach. And one of the things that they've done is, they've believed in the Cherbourg community and believed in Andrew as a change agent, and really have supported him."

[Chris Boden – Noosa Shire Council]

"The external auditing process is a very expensive element of the operating costs. We started talking about whether there might be a way that that cost could be reduced using automation and technology, and identified that one of those solutions could be using artificial intelligence.

"That evolved into the project that we know today, which is seeking to create a software system that will enable the MRF to automatically detect, analyze, and count the containers that flow through this facility, so that they can meet their audit obligations, and have a better sense of the volumes and quality and quantity of the product that they're producing."

[Siehanna Mickelo – Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council]

"It wasn't until I actually started the job, when they explained everything to me, I was like, "Wow, this is huge." And I just thought, "I'm so honoured and proud to be a part of this." It's great. It's completely different to anything I've done before. Before this, I worked in aged care, so this is a massive change to what I'm used to, but it's great. I'm loving it. I get to learn from other really intelligent people and work beside them. And not only that, I get to pass it on to other people that I get to work with.

So we're wanting to get students from Murgon State High School, I think we're wanting about 10. So they would come in, and they would work with me on labeling. We've got 5 brand new laptops that they can work on, and they'll work with me. I work in conjunction with Chris and Las at our Peregian hub. So they teach me, I teach our kids, and we all work together. It's a great process and it gives them skills."