drumMUSTER

The success of the drumMUSTER program just keeps rolling on, with the 16 millionth drum being collected for recycling by the Lockyer Shire Council in Queensland recently.

Working hand-in-hand with local shire councils, drumMUSTER organises and undertakes both the collection and recycling of eligible crop production and on-farm animal health chemical containers.

National Program Manager Allan McGann has been delighted with the growth of drumMUSTER, especially over the past 36 months.

"The pleasing aspect from our perspective has been the increased number of deliveries we have been recording overall," he said.

"drumMUSTER has seen an expansion of its coverage over the last few years in particular and that has allowed greater access for our chemical users, which is extremely important. During the last 12 months we have seen a record number of deliveries coming in and I'm happy to say that more and more chemicals users are seeing the value of participating in the program."

Local fruit grower Ross Stuhmcke's delivery of 90 containers helped reach the magical mark.

"It's pretty incredible, it's certainly a lot of containers!" he said.

"I used to cut our old containers in half and use them as water tanks and things like that, but it just got to the point where I didn't need them anymore. It has become a really useful service for us for the last couple of years, it's working out great."

drumMUSTER has Regional Consultants working right across Australia and there are 758 collection sites in shires around the nation. Amazingly, the initiative has now saved more than 20,000 tonnes of material from landfill since its inception in 1999.