The proposed container deposit scheme would cover plastic drink bottles, cans, liquid paperboard such as Tetrapacks and glass bottles like these. Photo / Duncan Brown
The proposed container deposit scheme would cover plastic drink bottles, cans, liquid paperboard such as Tetrapacks and glass bottles like these. Photo / Duncan Brown
New Zealand is about to go back to the future with the return of a bottle deposit scheme aiming to boost recycling and cut the number of drink containers ending up as litter and in landfills.
The size of the problem is stupendous — more than a billion bottles endup in New Zealand waterways, roadsides and rubbish dumps each year — but the food and beverage industries have fought hard against the reintroduction of mandatory bottle deposits.
On Sunday, however, the government announced a raft of proposals to improve recycling, including a nationwide container deposit scheme by 2025.
Under the scheme most glass, plastic, metal and liquid paperboard drink containers would carry a 20 cent deposit, refundable when the empty container is taken to a collection site.
Kiwi Bottle Drive founder and long-time recycling campaigner Warren Snow, of Kaitaia, celebrates the announcement of a national container deposit scheme in Auckland on Sunday. Photo / Supplied
Possibly no one in New Zealand was happier on Sunday than Kaitaia man Warren Snow, a founder of the Far North town's Community Business and Environment Centre (CBEC), lobby group the Kiwi Bottle Drive and Zero Waste NZ.
Snow has spent more than two decades campaigning for a return to the bottle deposits scrapped in the 1980s.
He has funded the battle from his own business but it's small change compared to the money available to industry.
''How quickly the worm can turn, after years of the Ministry for the Environment supporting the industry narrative that the scheme should be run on a voluntary basis. It only works if everybody has to do it.''
Snow said the scheme would create at least 2000 jobs around the country and save councils $20 million a year in litter clean-up and kerbside collection costs.
''It will also reduce waste by at least a billion containers a year and we won't have endless plastic bottles washing out through stormwater drains and ending up as microplastics in the ocean. This is a huge win for the environment. I'm totally delighted,'' he said.
The return of bottle deposits would also mean pocket money for kids and fundraising opportunities for community groups.
Snow put the change of heart at the ministry down to a change of personnel, with new staff considering what was best for the environment rather than the interests of industry.
''I take my hat off to the ministry for resisting very, very powerful pressure. It's not socialism, it's a business approach to solving an environmental issue.''
One of the criticisms levelled at the government proposal was that it didn't include milk bottles.
The explanation was that milk was usually drunk at home so those bottles could continue to be collected through kerbside recycling schemes.
Another complaint was that it could increase the cost of drinks.
Snow, however, said a few cents per bottle was insignificant compared to the jobs created and the benefits for the environment.
Drink containers currently thrown out in New Zealand could fill 700 jumbo jets every year, he said.
More than one billion drink containers end up as litter or in landfills each year. Photo / Peter de Graaf
Far North Mayor John Carter said he had previously supported calls to set up a drink container return scheme, and had travelled to South Australia to look at the scheme operating there.
'' I was hugely impressed by how much it reduced litter problems for the state but also by other indirect benefits — for example, the scheme provides great fundraising opportunities for community groups.''
Carter said it was too early to say how the ministry's proposals would affect kerbside collections in the Far North.
The council would make a submission and he urged all Northlanders to do the same.
Container deposit schemes have in the past been strongly opposed by the New Zealand Food and Grocery Council and big beverage producers such as Coca-Cola Amatil. The Environment Ministry, however, says Amatil is now ''taking an interest''.
The Food and Grocery Council was not available for comment yesterday.
In 2017 a petition by the Kiwi Bottle Drive calling for a refund scheme was signed by more than 15,000 people.
Recycling plan in a nutshell:
• Most drink containers will come with a 20 cent deposit, which will be refunded when the empty bottle is returned to a collection site.
• Milk bottles are exempt in the government proposal.
• Collection sites could include supermarkets and dairies.
• The scheme would come into effect by 2025. The Environment Ministry believes the bottle recycling rate would hit 90 per cent within five years.
• The Transforming Recycling plan also proposes a nationally consistent recycling system — currently every council has different recycling rules — and kerbside food waste collection for all homes and businesses by 2030.
• Environment Minister David Parker unveiled the proposals on Sunday, saying the country's waste systems aren't up to the job.
• Food scraps make up more than a third of a typical household's rubbish and create methane, a potent greenhouse gas, when sent to landfill.
• More than two billion drinks are sold each year in New Zealand. Fewer than half of these bottles are recycled, so more than one billion end up as litter or in landfills.
• NZers create about 17 billion kg of waste each year. Only about 28 per cent is recycled.
• New Zealand's previous bottle deposit scheme was scrapped in the 1980s. Until then collecting bottles was an important source of income for community groups, Scouts and schools.
