Thursday, June 25, 2009

Brisbane City Council, Dalby Regional Council, Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council, Eurobodalla Shire Council, Moonee Valley City Council and the Shire of Lake Grace were praised for their mobile phone recycling efforts at the 2009 MobileMuster Local Government Awards, which were presented at the National General Assembly for Local Government, in Canberra on the 23rd of June. 

The MobileMuster Local Government Awards, now in its third year, was created by the mobile phone industry’s official recycling program to recognise and reward leading councils across Australia, who have successfully promoted and collected old mobile phones, batteries and accessories for recycling.

Guest speaker Senator Bob Brown presented the awards to the winning councils, including ‘Top Collector Overall’ award to Brisbane City Council, Dalby Regional Council for ‘Best Promoter’, Shire of Lake Grace for ‘Top Collector Per Capita’ and Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council for ‘Working with Schools’. Joint winners, Mooney Valley City Council and Eurobodalla Shire Council were crowned the top award – ‘National Excellence"

 Brisbane City Council in Queensland was rewarded the ‘Top Collector Overall’ (by weight)for collecting 167kgs of mobile phones, batteries, chargers and accessories in the last 12 months. The council has achieved the best collection rate this year, thanks to their strong and ongoing commitment to mobile phone recycling

The Shire of Lake Grace in Western Australia was awarded the ‘Top Collector Per Capita Award’, for collecting 2.55kgs of mobile phone handsets, batteries and accessories per 100 residents. The award recognises the achievements of many of the smaller councils who have heavily encouraged residents to recycle and this was the highest collection rate per 100 residents across Australia

Dalby Regional Council in Queensland was awarded ‘Best Promoter’ for encouraging mobile phone recycling through various creative channels including newspaper articles, radio announcements, placement of public signage, website announcements, use of MobileMuster information brochures, and prominent, easily accessible MobileMuster drop-off stations throughout the region.

Eastern Metropolitan Region Council in WA was honoured with the ‘Working with Schools’ award for encouraging and supporting schools to learn about mobile phone recycling. The council worked with over 30 schools in the area and provided them with MobileMuster information packs, including newsletters to parents, stickers, flyers, posters and information for school assemblies on how the recycling process works

Moonee Valley's innovative Re-new program, which collects a range of reusable and recyclable materials through an extension of their existing kerbside collection service, saw twice as many mobiles collected in February compared to their 2008 collection trials. The council now holds quarterly collections and also collects mobiles from the Civic Centre

Eurobodalla Shire Council (NSW) in partnership with WSN Environmental Solutions and MobileMuster developed a system where specially marked MobileMuster recycling satchels are recovered through their material recycling facility from yellow-lidded recycling bins. The Council promoted this in their waste and recycling guide, which contained a free MobileMuster recycling satchel and is provided to each resident on the domestic collection

Rose Read, Manager of Australian Mobile Telecommunication Association’s (AMTA) recycling program, MobileMuster, congratulates the winning councils for their combined efforts in raising awareness of and driving mobile phone recycling amongst their local residents, schools and businesses.

“By promoting and participating in mobile phone recycling, local councils are playing an important role in recovering essential metals and plastics for reuse, preventing potentially harmful substances ending up in landfill and reducing society’s demand on our precious natural resources.

“There are over 280 local councils registered across Australia, which has seen public collection points nationwide grow to more than 3,500 of which more than 700 are hosted by local councils,” concluded Ms Read.

To locate your nearest drop-off point click here or call 1300 730 070.

The complete Media Release is available here