Container Deposit Legislation

Reducing broken glass for cyclists

Ever had a puncture from broken glass?  I'll be you have had plenty.  The industry doesn't like the consumers of throw-away containers to have to pay for the collection of their rubbish.  See the ABC TV clip "Australian Food & Grocery Council mounts campaign to oppose cash-for-cans scheme".

 Here's a letter received by City Cyclist from the Industry Group:

Hi Nicholas, thanks for your email, which has been referred to me for response.

My members want to see more recycling of end of life beverage packaging from the products they sell to the market, and less litter, where we differ with container deposit legislation (CDL) proponents and the NT Government is on how to get there.

Here are some key points:-  

- SA's CDL was put in place more than 35 years ago, on reusable packaging (predominantly glass, PET didn't even exist back then), and well before the introduction of kerbside recycling systems in Adelaide and surrounding townships. 
 
- As you would be aware, around Australia, millions of people now have access to kerbside recycling systems, in fact more than 90% of households across the country have a regular kerbside recycling collection

- Our premise is that the removal of valuable packaging, aluminium, glass and PET, from the kerbside recycling bundle may impact on the viability of the system, further increasing costs to households through their rates (so a double whammy, have to pay the deposit and handling fee and then get hit with higher kerbside recycling costs).  Remember, the whole premise of CDL is that you can redeem your deposit, so we would expect to see less beverage packaging presented in the kerbside recycling bin.

- SA's CDL was already established before they introduced kerbside recycling so they didn't have to deal with this issue (but recognised that there were a lot of other containers out there they needed to be collected, ie steel cans, shampoo bottles, detergent bottles, glass jam and pasta jars, wine bottles - yes wine is not subject to CDL in SA).  Residents in the cities of Darwin and Palmerson in the NT have had access to regular kerbside recycling services for a number of years now. 

- At some point we have to ask "at what cost" to the community and question whether there are other alternatives, neither of which the NT Government has done and this too is an issue of concern to our members, that the NT Government has not done a proper costing and environmental impact assessment of CDL and other options.

- And we have to look at what the data is telling us, not rely on anecdotal information.

- Keep Australia Beautiful's Annual Litter Report for 2009-10 found that SA has more litter by volume (volume is the measure environment groups usually cite as beverage containers take up much greater volume than cigarette butts) than the ACT, NT, QLD or VIC.  For a copy of the report see: http://www.kab.org.au/litter-research/what-we-do/national-litter-index/

- In fact the NT has the 3rd lowest volume of litter in Australia, lower than South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia. 

- I understand your concerns regarding punctures of bicycle tyres through the indiscriminate disposal of end of life beverage packaging, but ultimately we have to encourage personal responsibility and pride in our community, not just for the appropriate disposal of beverage containers, but cigarette butts, takeaway food containers, plastic bags. 

- We would contend that greater enforcement is needed on litterers (ie fines), rather than hitting those that are already doing the right thing (ie recycling and not littering) with additional costs. 

- Industry believes we can establish better systems in the NT to increase recovery and recycling, and reduce litter, not just only for beverage containers, but for a range of other materials both packaging and non-packaging.  And that we can do it a lot cheaper than a CDL system, minimising cost impacts on the community. 

- We are in discussions with the NT Government about what this alternative might look like.

Cheers and thank you for your interest.
JENNY PICKLES
GENERAL MANAGER 

Here's a graph of litter by volume from the Keep Australia Beautiful Campaign report mentioned.  (Note that Keep Australia Beautiful is another industry group - the packaging industry.

What this shows is that the States vary considerably and it changes every year.  SA is in the middle of the spread.  The variability between States means that differences are mainly due to behaviour in each State, no conclusion can be drawn about the effectiveness of deposit legislation.  No confidence intervals are provided, i.e.  error estimates - these would be based on the variability within States and also between States over time, i.e.  the interaction between year and State (please excuse the technical statistics!)

 Regarding the furphy that CDL will cost council's money by removing containers from kerbside collection.  Actually kerbside recycling costs councils - they pay by volume.  Reducing the volume will save councils money and they will collect the deposits on the containers that are put in the recycling bins.   So CDL will save us all money.  (See for example "The review of Container Deposit Legislation (CDL) in NSW found that a deposit-refund system would be likely to enhance kerbside recycling in terms of improved financial performance rather than act as a hindrance." from http://www.lgsa.org.au/resources/documents/Beyond_Recycling_Part_A.pdf

Finally, the "double whammy" mentioned is also a furphy.  The legislation only costs you money if you fail to return your container.  Whether you return it yourself or put it into your kerbside recycling, the money comes back to you or to your Council.  So who will be paying more?  People who litter, or put their recyclables in the rubbish.  Sounds fair to me. 

Litter by volume