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Renate Mueller
Supporting a one woman crusade against litter
Some people don’t care much about littering our
streets. Other people care a lot, such as 72 year old
Renate Mueller who takes it almost as a personal
affront when she sees junk food wrappers tossed out
of speeding car windows.
For the past five years Largs North resident Renate
has worked as a dedicated one-person clean-up
army. She started working with a friend Chin, a
Taiwanese woman, and together they “adopted” busy
Victoria Road.
“It was an obvious choice,” Renate says. “It’s a long
road, well used – and over the years it’s been used
as a litter bin with lots of rubbish, most of it thrown
from car windows. Drivers don’t see the rubbish,
but as a pedestrian you do – it’s amazing what
people throw away. It’s ever so downgrading for our
environment, the suburbs and residents who
live there.”
When Chin’s visa expired and she returned home
Renate was left to fend for herself “and it’s a very
long road”. Undaunted she continued her personal
clean-up campaign – and kept the name they gave
themselves, the Tzu Chi Buddhists.
“I care about the environment and I care for our
planet,” she says. “I’ve travelled in Asia and seen
bad pollution, but I have higher expectations of this
country as an advanced nation.”
Renate, who migrated from Germany as a teenager
in 1953, is a member of the KESAB/DTEI Road
Watch program and regularly reports to Council
officers when she comes across illegally
dumped rubbish.
Although Renate would love to be joined in her
quest by some like-minded local residents, she
doesn’t work entirely alone, with support from Port
Adelaide Enfield Council, which provides strong
rubbish bags and collects them when they’re full,
and KESAB, which provides her with signs, gloves
and jackets.
“Renate is our eyes and ears when it comes to
spotting illegally dumped rubbish in the area,” says
Port Adelaide Enfield Council’s Parks and Gardens
manager George Levay. “She’s a huge help. She does
the little stuff and we do the big stuff.”
The big stuff, illegally dumped rubbish, costs
ratepayers around $400,000 a year to remove and
dump as landfill. Council does its best to prevent
this by providing comprehensive waste, recycling
and green organic disposal services to its
community through the provision of a
domestic collection service.
Household waste bins are collected weekly and
although valuable resources are retrieved each week,
such as 55 tonnes of steel, 4000 to 5000 cans and
plastic bottles, and up to a tonne of aluminium, far
too much reusable waste goes to landfill, which is
why more efficient recycling is such an important
priority for Council.
To help make Renate’s life easier, around 1500 litter
bins, including butt-out bins and doggy dispensers
for dog droppings, have been provided throughout
the City.
In the past year Council has delivered a small kitchen
“bio basket” and a roll of compostable bag liners
to every resident in the Port Adelaide Enfield area,
which will help to divert thousands of tonnes of
kitchen waste away from landfill and be converted
into compost.
Underpinning Council’s waste management effort
is a three year waste management plan that sets
out measurable objectives, strategies and proposed
actions in the areas of domestic and public place
waste, household hazardous waste, litter and illegal
dumping and industrial waste.
A Unique, Healthy & Sustainable
Environment