“I wanted to take the chance to talk to those running depot across the Northern Territoryabout issues they come across,” Minister Hampton said.

He said while the scheme had taken off with a “positive amount of containers collected”, depots would complain about the amount of separations, problems with coordinators and complicated and long work work processes.

MT Bins production manager Matthew Knight said recycling was a “good opportunity to raise funds for clubs and organisations while doing something good for the environment”, but processes had to be made easier to become more efficient.

“In South Australia they sort containers by material - aluminium, glass or plastic.

“Here we sort by brand - which gives us thousands of different products to sort - that are a lot of avenues for dramas,” he said.

Mr Knight said while the idea behind the scheme - to get people to recycle their containers instead of dumping them - “has to help our town and our river”, the scheme still had “a long way to go” until it would work properly.

“They (Government) have it make things easier - for depots and for customers,” he said.

Mr Knight said MT Bins was in the process of upgrading their depot and would in the future look at hiring more staff, but at the moment the Northern Territory was still “learning the ropes”.

Sue Roberts, one of MT Bins’ first can collectors said she liked the idea of collecting containers to redeem 10 cents.

“It’s a great idea that helps our nature and our kids love it - they check collect cans from neighbours and friends and cash them in,” the mother-of-three said.

In the first two weeks of the Government’s Cash for Container scheme 50,000 containers were collected in Katherine alone.