Did you know that Australia sends about 6 billion beverage containers to landfill every year?
Drinks containers also make up a whopping 32% of the total volume of litter found in our parks, rivers, beaches and roadsides – where it is an eyesore and a peril for wildlife. In South Australia, their long-standing container deposit scheme has reduced that to just 4%.
Help reduce waste in NSW by signing up to support the Cash For Containers campaign below.
I’m joining forces with independent MP Clover Moore to bring to Parliament a bill to establish a container deposit scheme in NSW. The scheme will refund consumers 10 cents for beverage containers they return to a collection depot or reverse vending machine. You can download a briefing about the bill here.
Such a scheme will increase recycling rates in NSW, helping to recover valuable materials and divert waste from the litter stream and landfill. NSW has a goal of increasing its municipal waste recycling rates to 66% and current strategies are only reaching 44%.
Internationally, deposit/refund systems are the most effective mechanism for achieving high container recovery rates. Container deposit schemes exist in some states in the USA and Canada, and in Sweden, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. The average rate of recycling is 80% and as high as 95% in some countries.
The South Australian scheme has been in place for 30 years and is achieving more than 80% recycling rates. The Northern Territory has also just introduced a scheme. A Newspoll taken in 2007 revealed 82% of Australians surveyed are in favour of container deposit legislation.
It is well and truly time for NSW to step up and take real action to reduce pollution with a container deposit scheme of its own. Email the Premier below and tell him it’s time NSW had Cash for Containers.
Want to be more involved in the Cash for Containers campaign? Get active with these materials.
Download a hard copy petition form here for use in your local community.
Download a copy of a briefing about the bill here.
More materials will be available soon. Stay tuned. For a high resolution PDF of the briefing, please email peter.stahel@parliament.nsw.gov.au
May 21st, 2012 at 3:23 pm
This is the comment I added to my letter to Barry O’Farrell and Robyn Parker.
I, along with a number of friends, regularly clean up parks and beaches and can attest to growing litter problem and one of the biggest culprits is the beverage container. About half to three-quarters of all we collect would be recyclable glass, plastic and aluminium containers and it would be a boon if these were removed from the waste stream. While kerbside recycling obviously catches a lot, so do our beaches, parks, roadsides and waterways. And it’s a mess and a disgrace and I want an end to it! It seems the best way to do that is to put a price on it: let the market force a change in behaviour. Nothing else seems to make a difference.
May 21st, 2012 at 11:41 pm
Great idea and we cannot understand why NSW does not have a container deposit scheme already. We put the following comment on our message to Premier O”Farrell – We recently moved from South Australia so can vouch for the success of the scheme there. We love the Southern Highlands but continue to be amazed at the quantity of drink containers lying in the streets and on roadsides.
May 22nd, 2012 at 4:13 pm
I don’t quite understand why the question keeps getting asked as to why such and such a State doesn’t have container deposits when the answer is so simple (and obvious). You need to understand that the beverage industry (read also Aust Food Grocery – Packaging Covenant etc) has a publicly stated philosophical opposition to container deposits in Australia (and overseas) and continues to do absolutely everything that it possibly can to influence/prevent its introduction at either state or national level. The beverage / packaging industry is one of the more powerful lobby groups and no matter what you throw up it will counter it, unfortunately more often than not, with mis-truths and false or skewed reports. From my perspective it all boils down to political will (read ‘cohunes’). South Australia found them 30 years ago, and NT has got them now. Even the ‘national’ investigation that’s being going on for the last 4 years is full of flawed or deliberately skewed reporting. Speak to the Boomerang Alliance, gather your information and find out why NSW and other states don’t have it, lobby the beverage industry to support it (good luck with that one).
I do hope it happens in NSW but I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up if I was you.
May 29th, 2012 at 7:06 pm
This is long overdue. If SA has been doing this for 35 years, and the NT has recently implemented this, why can’t NSW?
It’s good for O’Farrell’s reutation too, supporting a scheme that others governments in the past (both Labor and Coalition) did not support.
C’mon Barry and the rest of the NSW Parliament! It’s not a matter of if, but WHEN it goes through.