By growing vegetables, Graeme Swift and other volunteers at Canberra’s Kingston Organic Community Garden are growing support for refugee families in their community. They’re also using the ACT Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) to support their work.
Alongside a communal compost bin, the garden includes a collection point where locals can bring recyclable containers that the garden can deposit to receive the 10c refund. The garden, which works closely with the Canberra Baptist Church, nominates families to receive vegetables and a share of the donations. The remaining funds go towards the growing plots, seedlings and gardening supplies.
“It’s a nice little circle of people dropping off their compost, which helps us grow stuff, and dropping off the cans, which gives us the income and we turn all of that into something for the refugees,” says Graeme.
The Kingston Organic Community Garden was established in 2008 with a grant from Baptist Community Services, which helped to transform the abandoned tennis courts into a working garden. Members pay an annual fee for a plot in which to grow veggies or flowers for their own use, and volunteers like Graeme help to look after the beds and choose what to plant.
According to Graeme, “Together it’s quite a nice community. It all works very well – it’s a very symbiotic relationship between the community, the church and the volunteers.”
Every 10 days, volunteers take the donated containers to the ACT CDS Cash-Back Depot in Fyshwick.The garden raises around $120 every trip and Graeme reports that the community garden has raised $4,000 for refugee services over the past year. He also appreciates the way the new ACT CDS system automatically sorts containers.
“We collect the containers, we clean them and with the new system, we don’t have to sort them out anymore. It’s great! The new system is fantastic as it does all the counting for you. You just tip them in,” Graeme says.
Graeme adds that the garden also runs a clean-up at Telopea Park to collect containers to recycle, but since the introduction of the ACT CDS, he no longer sees as many discarded cans polluting the park,
“There’s not many cans around to pick up anymore, there’s people out there every morning doing it – the ACT CDS has made a huge difference.”
If you’re a Kingston local or a keen gardener looking for a new community, the garden is open for volunteers on Tuesday and Friday mornings. Alternatively, if you’re looking for a new cause to donate your eligible drink containers to, you can also drop them off there.
“It’s an opportunity for people who don’t want to do it themselves to drop it off somewhere and give a return to a good organisation, so that we can keep the garden going and put a few thousand dollars a year in donations into supporting refugees,” says Graeme.