Marissa Newman|

Residents in Grafton now have a new location to drop of their cans, glass and plastic bottles as part of the Governments Return and Earn Scheme.

Residents can now take their eligible containers to the container return: Gate 5, Grafton Industrial Estate, 160 North Street Grafton and be paid a cash refund on the spot.

Keith Gregor has taken the initiative to open the new earn and learn location.

“I went down to one of the machines, the RVM (reverse vending machines) with my grandchildren, putting them through one at a time and it took us forever to do it. You have to line up to put your cans in, line up to put your bottles and then line up to put your plastics in. I thought that there must be a better way, I didn’t realise that there were other sorts of machines available, we did some research and found that they were available and there wasn’t any in Grafton, so we decided to go a bit further and we have got a big Tomra container here now.”

The machine is state of the art and it sorts everything so there is no need for you to put the bottles in one by one or separate them into their materials. After the machine has counted everything a cash refund is given at the end.

“A lot of people don’t like to go to those machines and stand there and put them in one at a time, at this machine here they can just pack them all in together, throw them in the machine, it’s not going to take them so long and they are going to be more inclined to recycle,” Mr Gregor said.

The return and earn location is open 6 days a week, 7:30am – 4pm, Monday to Friday and 7:30am – 3:30pm Saturdays.