Steve Pinney with some new bins provided by Grain Corp to assist him in his work to fundraise for Can Assist through the return and earn scheme.
Steve Pinney, 74, won’t let anything hold him back and he has given back to his community and continues to do so through the return and earn scheme. There isn’t a charity more admirable than Can Assist and Steve has collected 100,000 cans in less than 18 months to raise $10,000 for the charity.
GrainCorp has just delivered an array of new purpose built bins to make his job easier.
Steve said, “All the sporting clubs have been very supportive. The touch football, rugby league, rugby union and the race club. Last year I got 6500 cans from the races, that’s $650.
There’s a lot of work in it, but it’s worth it.
“I’ve gone from licking stamps to collecting cans!”.
“It’s a little hobby and it keeps me out of mischief and you get a good feeling for doing something nice.
“I started in May/June last year and we’ve just reached our target.
“I will set another target for next year, at least another ten or maybe a bit more because I have a couple of months start on it now.
“The Light Horse and the Carrington put the cans aside for me, they are massive, and the sporting groups.
“They drop them off at my place, but I’ve got bins at Robert’s Park and McLean Oval and the Showground.
“We have the new beaut bins that have the hole in them that you throw the can in.
Steve doesn’t do this for publicity and had to be urged to be part of telling his story. He enjoys what he does and likes to stay under the radar.
“I don’t do it for the publicity, you just do what you do.
“Everybody is good with it and to be it’s a bit of occupational therapy.
Daughter Mel is proud of her father.
She said, “It’s 100,000 cans and bottles and he doesn’t do it all on his own.
When there’s big events he has Can Assist volunteers that help out and he really appreciates that help.
“Almost every day people will see him driving around town picking cans up from the Light Horse, Robert’s Park, McLean Oval whenever
there’s sporting events and this coming weekend he will have a whole lot of the new bins that we got through the GrainCorp grant will be out at the Harden Picnic Races.
“The GrainCorp grant has allowed Can Assist and Dad in particular, to be able to expand the amount of recycling they do because in the past when something like the Picnic Races was on, he would have to pull all the bins from the different places he has got, like the Oval where they collect regularly, and he would have to take them out to the Kite Festival and put them all back out again.
“Now that we have this grant from GrainCorp it means that he has enough bins to specifically have for events and he can keep all of the other ones in those places.
“He is also looking to expand now where he has the bins, so we will be talking to the Council whether this summer we can have a bin at the pool and a few different other places where collection would be a really good thing to do. It’s great for the environment as well and it’s raising money for local families undergoing cancer treatment.
“For Dad it is something that he spends time almost every day going around and emptying those bins, sorting everything out, bagging them all up with the right number so that Parker’s can do the container deposit scheme.
“Parker’s give Dad the receipt for Can Assist for the amount of funds that they will get for the cans he has put in for Can Assist.
“Parker’s have been fantastic in the way that they have supported him to make this as streamlined as possible.
“His target by the end of next year is 15,000 cans and bottles.
