Why do a bottle drive? It’s worth it! Whether you are buying sports equipment, planning an excursion, or supporting a charity, you’ll find that a bottle drive is a fun and easy way to raise money.
In fact, the average bottle drive raises between $1,000 and $1,500. Some groups have even made over $3,000. Not bad for a half day’s work.
There are different ways you can run a bottle drive:
Central Site Collection: Find a good central location like an oval, basketball court, church or parking lot, tell everyone about it and let the beverage containers come to you. You can email Return-It and we can loan you a trailer and bins or super bags to bring your containers back to our depot, saving transport costs.
Depot Drop-Off: Collect your containers by setting up a stand at a Return-It Depot. We have spaces available Saturday and Sundays at our Depots. Returning containers doesn’t get any easier than this.
Neighbourhood Pick-Up: It’s kind of like door-to-door but with a twist. Drop off flyers in your community that ask people to leave their containers in front of their houses. Then, when your event day comes around, simply swing by and pick them up. Drop them back at your local Return-It Depot using your scheme ID.
Here are some simple steps to help you run your bottle drive:
Planning your bottle drive
- Form a team (it might be a committee already in place for fundraising or other activities) or choose a team leader for the bottle drive.
- Have a reason or goal for the bottle drive such as buying sports equipment, financing an excursion or sports trip, upgrading facilities or supporting a charity. Set a goal the community can get behind
- Email schools@returnit.com.au if you need to hire a trailer or would like to book a stand at our depot. Confirm the date and time. During the year trailers and depots can book out quickly so make sure you plan ahead in advance
- Create a roster of people who can help run the bottle drive. Many hands make light work. Jobs include publicity and marketing, pre-event organisation, collection day roster, trailer pick up and drop off (if required)
- Register with P&C’s QLD CRS program and don’t forget to set up a Containers for Change Scheme ID.
Promoting your bottle drive - Once you have confirmed the date, the type of bottle drive you are running and have people who can help, its time to coordinate the publicity and marketing. This is essential to a successful drive. You can put notices in the newsletter, ask local businesses to put posters up, announce it at events such as assembly or at half time during sporting matches and use flyers to get your friends and family to support the drive.
- Get social – create a Facebook event for your drive and invite as many people as possible. Use Twitter, Instagram and email too!
- Print simple flyers with:
- Name of your organization
- Reason for bottle drive
- Date of bottle drive
- Time for collection or drop off
- Collection method (Central Collection, Bottle Drive, Neighbourhood Collection)
- Address of collection point or Return-It Depot
- List of eligible containers
- Telephone number people can call for more information
- Make sure every member of your group has flyers to take home and deliver or hand out to family and friends. An effective method of promoting bottle drives is delivering flyers. If you have the volunteers to do this, you should deliver the flyers twice—one month before the drive and the week of the drive.
- Give families a kitchen tidy bag they can use to store and return containers. These can be purchased from all supermarkets and cost less than 7c each. All bags collected are recycled!
- People get busy and can sometimes forget fundraising events. Don’t forget to remind everyone a week before the drive. This includes confirming the roster with people who have offered to help.
On the Day
- If you have chosen a neighbourhood pick-up collection, ask families to collect containers left out in their own street. If you have delivered flyers for entire suburbs divide the area into sections and assign collectors, drivers and vehicles to these areas
- If you have chosen a central site or depot drop-off, have a team onsite to set up an area where people can drop off their containers, greet people bringing in donations, and super bags or bins for handling empty containers until you’re ready to deliver them to a Return-It Depot
After the Bottle Drive
- Once your containers are counted and your refund processed don’t forget to thank people and tell them how much you raised towards your fundraising goal.
- Plan your next bottle drive!!!
To find your local Return-It Depot visit www.returnit.com.au/qld/locations or email schools@returnit.com.au for more information.