With over 14 billion drink containers a year and only half being recycled its little wonder that the focus of many in the environment community is focussed on container deposit schemes. NSW recently extended the implementation date for its container deposit scheme by five months to December 1st 2017. This extension was to ensure the new scheme process would work efficiently throughout the community and to ensure business got fully behind the program.
The 2015-2016 National Litter Index found that 49% of litter by volume was made up of beverage containers – and 43 per cent of the total volume was containers that will be caught by the NSW container deposit scheme.
Under the scheme, people in NSW will be able to return most empty beverage containers between 150 ml and three litres to collection points for a 10-cent refund. The container deposit scheme will give people a financial incentive to do the right thing and recycle drink containers to significantly reduce the estimated 160 million drink containers littered every year in that state.
Queenslanders are looking for a similar program in 2018 with a similar refund system. High-level talks between Queensland and NSW governments are already under way around the proposal for one operator to run the scheme in both states.
South Australia has had a recycling scheme in place since the 70’s and the Northern Territory introduced one in 2011. The success of the scheme in South Australia has seen over 80 per cent of bottle and cans recycled. Similar cash-for-container schemes worked in 40 countries around the world.
The extension of this scheme is likely to have major benefits to a range of community organisations and in Queensland alone, these organisations are expected to benefit to the tune of more than $25 million per annum.
Looking for a recycling company that can help you?
With recycling operations in NSW and Queensland as well as Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, Recycal are acutely aware of the importance of these programs and the impact they can have on landfill and other environmental programs. Paying ‘Cash for Scrap’ for these aluminium cans is a core competency of the company, as is its ability to work with the local community and a range of small, medium and large Australian companies, to assist in all aspects of recycling, from basic scrap metal recycling, to large scale transformer dismantling and everything in between.
