Local YouTube star,author and father of two Beau Miles says there’s one mystery driver who regularly hurls Victoria Bitter or Jim Beam cans out a car window and on to a local road.
Beau Miles collecting cans and bottles in West Gippsland on Tuesday.Simon Schluter
Uncannily,the cans land next to the same white road marker. Fortunately for local tourism and tidiness,Miles picks them up.
He is a rubbish runner,which doesn’t mean he is bad at jogging. Carrying a bag,he likes to pick up trash he finds along the road as he runs.
And on Wednesday,Miles will finally be able to cash in the cans and bottles he finds.
On Tuesday afternoon,he vowed to jog about 20 kilometres of the 60-kilometre distance to a recycling depot in the town of Traralgon,picking up last minute pieces from the verges of the road.
His friend Jim Graham towed the almost 10,000 cans and bottles the pair have collected over the last year and they camped out on Tuesday night outside the depot.
The two men planned to be the first in line when the Return-It Depot in Traralgon East opens at 8am – to claim their 10 cents per item under the state government’s container deposit scheme,which starts across Victoria on Wednesday.
Miles doesn’t think anyone else will be sleeping out to get in “like they’re getting concert tickets” but said it will be fun to be first.
And yes,they are making a video of it. Miles that attract millions of views on topics such as fatherhood,fitness,the environment and their oddball local adventures.
Beau Miles walking 90 kilometres from Jindivick to his then workplace at Monash University in Clayton in 2014 – one of his “backyard adventures”.Rodney Dekker
Videos have documented him secretly building his wife a $60 cabin and 40 days eating only canned beans. One video showed him running a lap of his eight hectare property every hour for 24 hours and doing odd jobs such as pruning his garden and painting a fence between laps.
He has guest starred on broadcaster Hamish Blake’s podcastHow Other Dads Dad and Blake appeared in Miles’ video via the Snowy high plains with their children.
Miles has also written a book on his exploits calledThe Backyard Adventurer. He grew up on a hobby farm in Drouin West near a rubbish dump,and his parents taught him to reuse and recycle anything from furniture to old ladders to clothes.
Picking up litter as you jog makes a running route prettier,he says.
“I figure this collecting for the container deposit scheme is a win-win because I can earn 10 cents a can,clean up the side of the road and you go for a run at the same time.”
In April this year,Miles and Graham drove a truck 400 kilometres to Albury,NSW (and running some of the way) to highlight that Victoria at the time didn’t have a container deposit scheme.
The plan was to cash in more than 8000 cans and bottles they had collected at the time under the NSW scheme,but they were turned away because they weren’t locals.
They shot video footage,however,and Miles turned it into a comical film, – inspired by the episode of American sitcom Seinfeld in which Kramer and Newman attempt to drive bottles and cans from New York to Michigan to cash them in.
Beau Miles kayaked 130 kilometres over four days from Jindivick to Monash University’s Frankston campus.Supplied
In Jindivick,Miles has done rubbish jogging for about a year,explaining that he’s found nearly all his tools – including hammers,pliers,tape measures and screws – from the side of the road.
He took part in cash for recycling schemes for metal and glass when working as an adventure guide in Vermont in the US,in the early 2000s,and said it was brilliant that the Victorian scheme is finally returning.
“It’s been a long time coming and it’s great that it’s finally here,” Miles says.
“I’m very positive about it,I’m not negative that it’s taking 20 bloody years to get here,but it’s nice to finally be at the start time of something that will be here for a long time and make people respect resources,I suppose.”
Miles says the $1000 expected to be raised from his container deposit scheme redemption will be spent on rehabilitating roadsides,for example by planting trees.
More information on Victoria’s Container Deposit Scheme can be found at
How to deposit containers