Container Deposit Schemes: Where to from here? – Australia
Posted on August 9, 2023 by DrRossH in Plastic RecyclingAustralia is on the cusp of being the only continent to be fully covered by container deposit refund schemes.
Source: Container Deposit Schemes: Where to from here? – Waste Management Review
Alex Young, Director of the Container Deposit Scheme at the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA), said while the objective of the NSW scheme when it was introduced in 2017 was to reduce litter, it was also about recycling and encouraging users to keep coming back.
The scheme was designed to be cost effective, at no cost to government – a “proper, extended producer responsibility model where the industry paid for the cost of the scheme”.
It also had to complement the kerbside system and have a robust tracking and verification system to both monitor the scheme’s success and manage the risk of fraud.
Six years on and the scheme is ticking all the boxes, Alex said.
“The proof’s in the pudding.
“We’ve got more than 600 return points, which is significantly more than the minimum required in the legislation, so we know that we’re driving that convenience. We’ve collected over 9.3 billion containers, so we’re seeing good collection rates, we’ve reduced litter by 53 per cent and we’ve doubled the resource recovery rate compared to kerbside prior to the scheme.
“Not only that, but what we’ve seen is really high-quality recycling – bottle-to-bottle recycling.”
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