Wheeling a recycling bin to the curb can be a mundane weekly chore for many Australians, but for residents in remote regions across outback Queensland, those mainstream recycling services do not exist.

To combat the growing need and demand for recycling in the state's North West, a not-for-profit organisation hit the Gulf of Carpentaria's red dirt streets to do it themselves.


Gulf Containers for Change (C4C) is a container-refund scheme, collecting cans and bottles from residents and businesses for recycling for a return of 10 cents per item, which is reinvested into the community.

The scheme diverted 4 million bottles and cans from landfill in 2024.

And now, Gulf C4C is expanding its 270,000-square-kilometre patch to service Mornington Island, one of the most isolated regions in the country.


Lauren Christian, an executive general manager of COEX, the company facilitating Gulf C4C, said the expansion was environmentally and culturally significant.

Partnering with Indigenous rangers on the island, containers will be collected and taken to the local barge.

They will then be shipped to the nearest mainland town, Karumba, for recycling.

Ms Christian said expanding the scheme to the island of 1,200 people had the potential to save thousands of containers from litter and landfill, and the 10-cent-per-item refund would be invested back into the community.

"The rangers have been really passionate about keeping plastic bottles and cans out of the environment," she said.

"We have a number of really engaged community advocates who understand the benefits of recycling and the benefit from an economic, a social and an environmental perspective."

Cleaning up country​

Gulf C4C director Annie Cork is based in Normanton, a small town 500 kilometres north-east of Mount Isa, and loads up her truck every day, ready to collect thousands of containers.

"Unlike probably most of the other depots, we go out and do household collections," she said.

"We've got two trucks and two trailers … there's a huge amount of kilometres — as you could imagine — that we'd cover."


Ms Cork said the scheme ticked all the boxes for the Gulf.

"You're not only cleaning up country, but people are getting paid,"she said.

"It's cleaned up towns immensely. It's generating quite a bit of revenue back into the economy.

"We do a massive amount of cattle stations as well, the ones that are not a million miles off the road, and they're really appreciative of it."

Garbage in the sticks​

At Stirling Station, 100 kilometres north-east of Normanton, the only waste-management system was a personal landfill built on the property.

But Gulf C4C has changed that.

"[Containers] would just go into the dump, because we'd have nowhere else to take them," station manager Cheryl Ryan said.


"We just can't go and do what they do [in the city] when someone collects it. It's all up to us to look after it.

"Our workers put all our tins and plastics in a bin and our bottles in a separate one, and then we collect them in the bigger bins, and then we take them when someone's going into town."

But for the workers on the station, it is about more than just recycling.

"We have all our young workers and we have a social club, and we thought it was a good way to get a little bit of money to take them out fishing on a boat at the end of the year," Ms Ryan said.

"It's a benefit. You're helping the environment by recycling … and it's just that bit of money in your pocket as well."

By Abbey Halter