Ōtautahi – New Zealand is introducing a drinking container return scheme, but not until 2025.
People will pay a deposit when they buy a drink which is redeemed when returned to a retailer or recycling centre. This will recover millions of bottles a year.
In 2020-21, just 45 percent of the more than 2.5 billion glass, plastic, aluminium, paperboard and other single use drink containers consumed was recycled.
More than 80 percent of the public and 90 percent of city and district councils support the introduction of a nationwide drinks container return scheme.
In December 2018, the Kiwi Bottle Drive’s petition calling for a nationwide, mandatory container return scheme attracted 15,276 signatures.
The petition was supported by the parliamentary environment select committee which advised the government progress with the scheme.
The scheme reimburses community recycling centres and other community groups for the work they do and removes a burden off ratepayers and councils to clean up after the beverage industry.
The scheme will help New Zealand move from to a more circular economy where 1.7 billion bottles and cans are landfilled or littered in roadsides, parks and oceans in New Zealand each year. Too many plastic and glass bottles, cartons and aluminum cans end up in landfills, or as litter on streets, in parks, streams, on beaches and in the ocean.
This will more than double New Zealand’s low recycling rates for empty drinks bottles, cans and cartons from a measly 45 percent to more than 85 percent.
The scheme will also create more refillable drinks, which helps the environment because washing, reusing and refilling bottles reduces waste, the use of raw materials and climate emissions.
Milk should not be exempt from the scheme. It is also important the beverage industry is not given the power to control the scheme.
Overseas experience shows that the beverage industry has a vested interest in suppressing
return rates, as this saves them money.
Kiwi beverage producers should pay the deposits upfront for every container put on the market, not only reimburse the ones that are returned, the Kiwi Bottle Drive says.
