Was travelling back through NSW last month and came across this drumMUSTER collection site.
It certainly took me back to those years or decades even, where our pesticides originally came in tin or light steel drums with gallons marked in them.
They certainly were re-used or re-purposed, might be a better term, around countless farming operations. Eventually they rusted out and were thrown in property owners earthen pits, old wells or gully areas and covered with soil…..maybe .?
Not the best end to some fairly toxic pesticides containers and very pleased I am to see the end of this process. Fairly sure not many would have been triple rinsed either by the way, as is these days.
No, these days they are mostly plastic containers from one litre to 205-litres and including the few steel drum types are recycled and turned into wheelie bins, fence posts and a myriad of other useful products.
Agsafe was established in 1993 with a commitment to product stewardship, safe transport, storage and handling of Ag and Vet chemicals.
This then enabled the countless numbers of people involved In all these parts of Australian Agriculture to be suitably trained in all of the above processes from handling from the manufacturing sites to retailer stores, and then for end use on farms and properties.
In 1999 Agsafe introduced drumMUSTER aimed at recycling empty containers and thankfully this very much appealed to our ag industry.
Huge numbers of empty pesticide containers were collected and recycled over the many years and by 2002 over three million drums had been collected by reseller cages and local government collection points, just like this one in my NSW photo.
ChemClear is slightly different however, Agsafe introduced this process for environmentally sound disposal of unwanted or obsolete AgVet chemicals. Another huge boost environmentally for our Ag industry and reduction of a real headache for our responsible agricultural industry folk.
Just recently I was informed that ChemClear had reached a one million litres/kilograms milestone with collection of unwanted chemicals across the Australian landscape.
Huge numbers they are and yet there is more to be done in both ChemClear and drumMUSTER across both our farming and livestock industries.
So, well done to Agsafe and the original people involved in getting it up and running. It is up to us in the current ag industry endeavours, to continue this collection and recycling or disposal of drums or containers and an environmentally sound way of getting rid of these old unwanted chemicals we no longer use.
