For Lost and Found Pets Illawarra Rescue, each container donated through Return and Earn represents vital funding for their ongoing work desexing stray and homeless cats and kittens.

Around the Illawarra, colonies of feral cats, strays and unwanted litters of kittens are all helped by the charity.

“We pay to have the cats desexed, and the aim is for there not to be colonies or unwanted litters in the future,” explained Anne McNaughton, president of Lost and Found Pets Illawarra Rescue.

“I wouldn’t like to guess the number we help – there is an awful lot of them.

“We probably spend about $300 on each animal we desex. We have a wonderful vet at Albion Park Rail who is awesome.”

Funds from recycling eligible bottles, cans and cartons through Return and Earn has so far raised over $12,700. The money is used to fund the desexing surgeries and pay for medical supplies.

“We also try to help members of the community with vet bills at times, we offer free microchipping plus we’ve got our rescue animals we look after,” Anne said.

For the charity’s core group of 30 volunteers, recycling containers at the Stockland Shellharbour Shopping Centre Return and Earn machine is a twice-weekly team effort.

Since 2019, they have returned over 120,000 containers for the 10c refund.

“We get help from a local club, the Shellharbour Club, who collect containers and put them aside for us,” Anne said.

“We are really grateful to them, that support has been ongoing. Sometimes we get calls from the wider community, who say they have some bottles for us, so we go and collect those. People can be very kind.

“And we also have a lot of our followers from our Facebook page who save containers for us and we go and collect them.

“Every animal we adopt out also gets a pack, which includes our Return and Earn bar code, which can be scanned at Return and Earn machines so container refunds can be donated to us.”

To donate search for Lost and Found Pets Illawarra in the charity section of the Return and Earn app.

To find out more about Lost and Found Pets Illawarra Rescue visit: Lost and Found Pets Illawarra Inc | Lost