The Baird government is to be commended for its plan to introduce a cash for containers recycling scheme. Strategies to help clean up NSW beaches, parks and rivers have been on state and federal government agendas for decades but whenever cash for containers has been mooted, their best of intentions have always been undermined by the powerful and well-funded drinks industry.
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Apparently no longer. In a letter obtained by the Sun-Herald, the Premier Mike Baird and the Environment Minister Rob Stokes, wrote to the National Packaging Covenant Industry Association just before Christmas saying the government favoured the introduction of a state-based container deposit scheme and invited the industry to get on board.
The drinks industry has conducted a long campaign against container deposit schemes across Australia. In late November, the NPCIA submitted its own recycling proposal to the NSW government but the Premier and the Minister gave it short shrift, saying it lacked clear governance arrangements, was not adequately specific and did not have the level of long-term funding required to achieve sustained behavioural change.
The NSW government is proposing a container deposit scheme including using reverse vending machines and community recycling centres which target containers predominantly consumed away from home.
It is not as though recycling drink containers is a radical innovation. A generation ago, Australians returned soft drink bottles to corner stores. They received a small cash deposit in return and the glass bottles were re-used. It had the felicitous benefits of being a ready source of pocket money and enhancing the environment. But the advent of plastic containers changed all that.
Manufacturers started closing bottle washing operations and the landscape soon featured a new form of visual pollution. As concerns about litter exploded, one Australian state – South Australia – acted. In 1977, it introduced a container deposit scheme that is still in place today.
Five decades later, a drive west along the Barrier Highway from Broken Hill is living proof of the continuing efficacy of the South Australian policy: in NSW the bitumen and roadsides are littered but once over the border the verges are noticeably free of plastic and glass containers.
The Northern Territory introduced a similar scheme four years ago. In the first 12 months an extra 35 million containers were returned. In 2013 Coca-Cola, Schweppes and Lion Nathan successfully argued the legislation was illegal under Commonwealth law as it required different production processes for the same product in different states and territories. The outcry forced the Federal Executive Council to give the Territory's scheme permanent exemption.
In NSW, drink container recycling looms as a sleeper issue in the upcoming state election. Previously, the Liberal Upper House MP Catherine Cusack claimed the drinks industry had threatened to target her with a $4 million advertising campaign during the 2011 election if the new Barry O'Farrell government introduced a scheme and the Australian Food and Grocery Council ran advertisements labelling any such plans a "container tax". Last March, O'Farrell met his former Victorian counterpart Denis Napthine with a view to joining forces for a cash-for-cans scheme.
National reform has since stalled. But the benefits of a container deposit scheme are so self-evident that the Baird government's decision to seize the initiative makes good environmental, economic and political sense.
