Most councils give candidates up to seven days to remove campaign posters from council property such as fences and poles after an election.
So what happens to the mountains of corflutes, T-shirts and other paraphernalia after polling day?
Labor volunteer Greg Vaughan, said the party’s striking red shirts were collected and washed at the end of the campaign.
“The generic Labor T-shirts can go across state and council elections,” he said.
“If you have a Labor corflute that’s not specific to state or local, that can go in between.”
Having non-specific signs urging people to “Vote 1” for a particular party is also a common recycling tactic.
“It means that we can reuse it,” Greens volunteer coordinator Zoe McClure said.
Kristina Keneally, Labor’s unsuccessful candidate for the seat of Fowler in Sydney’s south-west, told the ABC some of the generic corflutes — as well as A-frames, some of which were made by the local men’s shed — would be collected and stored for the next election.
“We have a couple of storage spots. Some will be in my home, and some will probably be in a storage location,” Ms Keneally said.
It gets a bit more complicated when a candidate’s face and a name is featured, however.
Dave Sharma was defeated by independent Allegra Spender at the weekend, and the spokesperson said any corflutes featuring his face or name would be donated to local schools and childcare centres, where the white reverse side could be used to mount artworks.
Greens volunteer Chris Maltby said he had already been approached by friends who work for the State Emergency Service (SES) to see if he had leftover corflutes.
“The SES use them for doing things like repairing skylights when there are hailstorms,” he said.
