Thamarrurr women rangers recycle rubbish at Wadeye
The Thamarrurr Women’s Ranger team, working with the community of Wadeye in the Northern Territory, have removed rubbish from their land and coastline and earned cash through recycling in the process.
The Women’s Ranger team of the Thamarrurr Development Corporation have made an outstanding contribution to cleaning up their country through an inspired recycling project.
Wadeye is a remote community located 400 kilometres south west of Darwin in the Northern Territory. While the area features breathtaking landscape and waters, the community was facing a large rubbish problem.
Over time a large amount of packaging and waste products had spread around the community and the surrounding land and sea country. As well as being unsightly, rubbish can have a negative affect on the health of people and wildlife.
Enter the Thamarrurr Women’s Rangers. Both the men’s and women’s groups had been working to clean and protect their vast 250km coastline for many years, including collection of marine debris. In 2015 alone they removed 450 kilograms of rubbish from along the coastline.
However, the problem was too big to take on alone, so the six women ranger team began working on a solution. In 2015, Tangaroa Blue, a not-for-profit organisation, supported the Rangers to run a community meeting to look at ways of tackling the rubbish problem. Recycling is a key part of the "No Rubbish on Country" project that was developed to address the problem.
Melissa Bentivoglio from Thamarrurr Development Corporation said the Rangers talked with many local organisations and got lots of support for the initiative.
“The local Community Development Programme participants made the steel frames that hold the recycling bags and Murin Freight agreed to take the recycling to Darwin free of charge,” Melissa said.
“The Rangers also made a deal with Bevcon Recycling in Darwin to purchase the batteries and Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) material. As the CDS was an existing scheme, the Rangers were able to get an instant return.”
As a result in 2016, Thamarrurr Rangers became a collection point for CDS materials. Each Friday community members bring recyclables in exchange for cash. So far this year over 200,000 items have been recycled with over $20,000 in refunds going directly to the Community.
Through this the Women Rangers have succeeded in having 269,042 items - including 106,067 cans, 130,898 plastic bottles, 31,275 poppers, more than 1,000 glass bottles and more than 500 car batteries - removed from the Wadeye area over a six month period and turning the Wadeye rubbish problem into a resource for the Community.
“The Rangers are aware that there is still much to be done to address the rubbish problem at Wadeye, but a seed has been firmly planted regarding a change in attitude towards litter and recycling,” Melissa said.
“Further community awareness raising is planned for 2017, as well as exploring further opportunities for recycling at Wadeye.”
Find out more
The Thamarrurr Rangers are funded by the Australian Government, through the Indigenous Rangers - Working on Country program. This program creates employment, training and career pathways for Indigenous people in land and sea management.
The Australian Government funded Community Development Programme helps people in remote communities find work allowing them to contribute to their communities and gain skills while looking for work.
Tangaroa Blue Foundation is an Australia-wide not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the removal and prevention of marine debris.