Australian container return schemes are a booming good news story
By close of business on Tuesday the NSW scheme had collected 13,742,879 bottles and cans and paid out $1.374 billion in refunds, with 1.1 million tonnes of product being recycled.
In Victoria, an estimated 1.8 billion containers have been recycled through the container deposit scheme since its launch in November 2023. A government spokesman said Victorians had collected $186 million from the scheme, including more than $1.9 million donated to charities and community groups.
The last state to introduce its own scheme was Tasmania, which began operations at the start of May and collected more than 1.2 million bottles and cans in its first four days of operations.
According to a study published earlier this month in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, the density of plastic pollution had fallen 39 per cent over a decade in coastal areas around Australia's cities, in part due to container deposit schemes.
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It found containers were not the main form of debris found around Australian cities, except Hobart, according to a survey conducted shortly before the Tasmanian container deposit scheme began operations.
'Hobart, which did not have container deposit options at the time of the survey, was found to have the highest occurrence of fragment and whole beverage bottles compared to all other cities,' says the report. 'This provides additional evidence that effective policies, such as container deposit legislation, can help to reduce plastic in the environment.'
The schemes, which see consumers charged a 10¢ deposit which is refunded upon container returns, are successful because they provide the packaging industry with a clean and reliable stream of material for recycling, said James Dorney, chief executive of Tomra Cleanaway, the joint venture which runs the NSW scheme.
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