With the cost of planning a wedding rising, this couple turned to recycling bottles, cans and cartons to raise extra cash for their big day.
When Andrew Chancellor moved from Sydney to Canberra in 2020 to be with Shanly Cheater, they began using the ACT Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) to receive the 10c refund for every eligible drink container and pay for weekly necessities such as groceries and bills. A few years later, they began putting the money towards their wedding, which took place in September 2025.
Shanly works in education and Andrew is a hospital wards-person, which has turned out to be handy for accessing containers. “I get cans from work, from my family, my mum, my grandma and my brother,” he says. “When we had our wedding to plan, we thought we would put it towards that. It was a cool thing to do.”
After their engagement, the couple dedicated one and a half years to their recycling efforts to save for their wedding. Andrew says the scheme helped them raise $2,000, from a staggering 20,000 containers. This amount allowed them to pay for the photography for their big day.
“It didn’t pay for our whole wedding, but it definitely helped,” says Andrew. “We paid for our photography through that.”
The ACT CDS currently has 20 return points in Canberra to recycle bottles, cans and cartons. Since the commencement of the scheme, over 466 million containers have been recycled via these return points – raising $46 million for ACT residents and community organisations.
Andrew and Shanly use the ACT CDS cash-back depot in Mitchell. He describes how easy it is to sort the bottles himself and receive the cash straight away.
“We have these big carton bags and fill up at least six of them which fit in my car, and then it’s only about a 5-minute drive to Mitchell.”
Andrew notes the incentive was not only financial, but also environmental. “We should do more recycling,” he believes. “It’s good to see even more containers in the scheme as well – we need to look after our planet.”
Even though their wedding is over, the couple plans to keep using the scheme and are even finding it’s something they can do as a couple.
“Shanly and I did it yesterday,” Andrew laughs. “We did it together, it’s a bit faster that way.”
