BW Griggs & Sons takes cleaning up the farm very seriously indeed.
As the longstanding Huonville apple-growing business continues to gain traction in the competitive fruit and vegetable industry, it has enlisted the help of the drumMUSTER program to safely dispose of its empty agvet chemical containers. Led by third-generation farmers Dane and Brett, the company has gone from strength to strength in the past few years, culminating in the arrival of their very own apple variety, dubbed ‘Rubigold.’
BW Griggs & Sons are Freshcare Quality Assurance certified and every season are relying less and less on chemicals, but feel safe in the knowledge that drumMUSTER can help get rid of the empty containers they do utilise. Since establishing in 1998, the service has collected and recycled over 18.6 million containers nation-wide. There have been over 250,000 agvet chemical containers retrieved from Tasmania alone. Once a container is processed, it is then transformed into practical items such as wheelie bins, road signs and park benches.
Using the program has come naturally to the Griggs boys since they first discovered its existence around 2008.
“We’re situated right next to the drumMUSTER collection station, so we’ve been using the program pretty much since it’s been there, which is around four years or so,” Dane said.
“We first heard about it via word of mouth after doing a chemical safety course and it helps us get rid of our old chemical drums, which is great. My brother looks after this side of things and he definitely recommends drumMUSTER to other people.”
While there are challenges ahead for the Griggs family, having the help of one of the major supermarkets is a massive coup and BW Griggs & Sons also enjoys a particularly ‘fruitful’ relationship with markets in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
“We have just achieved Plant Breeder Rights and trademark-protected our new Rubigold apple variety and at the moment we’re just breaking into the market; Coles has been taking it exclusively for the last three seasons so they’ve been great,” Dane said.
“There’s a bit of competition on the horizon with both New Zealand and China, but business is good at the moment, we’re hanging in there!”
07/05/2012