Activist labels kerbside recycling a con

By SIMON COLLINS

New Zealanders should not be conned into purely voluntary recycling schemes and should insist on refunds for returned bottles and cans, says an expatriate who has seen it happen in Australia.

Christchurch-born Peter Woods, who was mayor of the west Sydney city of Concord and later vice-president of the International Union of Local Authorities, is going to Wellington today to launch a campaign to bring back refundable deposits for cans and bottles in his home country.

"Don't be conned the way they were in Australia," he said in Auckland. "Don't be conned by the corporate giants."

The major companies selling packaged products, such as Coca-Cola and the breweries, are due to sign an accord with the Government in Parliament's Grand Hall on August 10 to increase voluntary recycling over the next four years.

The accord will aim to lift recycling rates of plastics from 19 per cent to 23 per cent; steel from 34 to 43 per cent; glass from 45 to 55 per cent; and paper from 61 to 70 per cent by 2008.

It will allow a slight drop in the recycling rate for aluminium cans from 70 per cent to 65 per cent. Packaging Council executive director John Webber said the present high rate might be an aberration.

But Mr Woods said South Australia had achieved recycling rates of 74 per cent for plastic soft-drink and water bottles, 86 per cent for glass and 86-92 per cent for cans since it forced companies to pay for returned containers in 1977. They pay 5c for every bottle, can or plastic drink container.

"Container deposit legislation is what we all knew as kids here in New Zealand - you take your soft-drink bottle back and you get money for it," he said.

"In South Australia it works like a dream. But they [drink manufacturers] have been trying to smash that since it started. New Zealand has to step back and have a good look at it before you get done like a dinner."

Despite kerbside recycling schemes, New Zealanders still send as much packaging material to rubbish dumps as they did in 1994 because they buy 604,225 tonnes of packaging a year - up by a third in the decade.

The volume of glass bought each year has almost doubled, from 84,040 tonnes in 1994 to 155,885 tonnes, mainly because beer cans and refillable beer bottles have been replaced by small bottles.

Mr Woods said the industry supported kerbside recycling because it could pass the costs on to ratepayers. But that meant manufacturers dodged their own responsibilities.

"All ratepayers are slugged a similar amount, whether they consume the products or not," he said.

"By shielding ratepayers from a quantity-based payment arrangement in this way, kerbside could even be seen as a system that perpetuates our unsustainable consumption levels."

However, Mr Webber said one problem was that refundable deposit systems stopped being economic when the industry stopped refilling old bottles 20 years ago. This happened when milk was deregulated, milk companies started trucking milk long distances into supermarkets, soft-drink making became centralised in a few big plants and breweries started exporting beer.

"It would cost tens of millions of dollars, with uneconomic scenarios, to go back to having your local soft-drink manufacturer in every town filling his own little bottles," he said.

* Recycling activists are offering 5c for every glass, aluminium or type 1 or 2 drink container at "buy-back" bottle stores in Auckland's Aotea Square, outside the Beehive in Wellington and at other places around the country at lunchtime today.