NSW considering bottle deposit scheme - ACT should also

Evil_Kitten said :

gooterz said :

Didnt canberra already have this?

We had aluminium can recycling where you got paid by weight I believe? I remember collecting cans and taking them down as kids.

Yep, the old ‘Cash for Cans’ scheme. I can remember there was a collection point in the car parks in Woden, where the Police Station is these days. People would show up with trailer loads of cans.

When I was a kid, dad would take my younger brother and I out to see the Raiders play at Sieffert Oval. Dad and I would watch the game, while my bro went around collecting empties. There was a collection point set up in the ground, so he always left with a few bucks in his pocket. Probably made cleaning the ground after the game cheaper too!

The trick with adding something like a container deposit arrangement to a place that already has a household kerbside collection for mixed recyclables is how to avoid ‘hollowing out’ the kerbside service. If you put a deposit value on a bunch of what is currently also valuable to the kerbside collection provider (on-selling the recovered material), then what happens to the economics/finance of the kerbside collection? In some circumstances, the answer is local government paying more (and passing this through to the rates base) because it costs more to provide a kerbside collection service now some of the value in that material flow is diverted. That could still be a good option, but needs to be thought through.

I don’t like this, because it’s inconvenient for me, so I’m going to claim that I think it’s a good idea, but not practical / effective because of the anecdotal actions of a tiny, much maligned minority. Now it’s not stupid selfishness – it’s evidence-based policy, or even better, ‘common sense’.

Un-Australian. Just wanted to slip that in too.

Evil_Kitten said :

gooterz said :

Didnt canberra already have this?

We had aluminioum can recycling where you got paid by weight I believe? I remember collecting cans and taking them down as kids.

In the ’70’s we used to get 10 cents for large, glass coke bottles from our local shop keep at the Holt Shops (no plastic bottles back then). My brother and I would get the bottles from behind his shop and sell them back to him.

Unfortunately for us he soon cottoned on and we had to find other money making ventures (after the size 10 shaped bruises faded from our backsides).

As others have implied, it doesn’t matter if most of the current litterers continue to litter, as now other people (kids and charities) will have an incentive to pick it up. Think how much could be made on Clean-up Australia Day if this was already in place – hundreds or thousands of dollars per clean-up site, and maybe then they could ditch the ironic and inappropriate sponsorship by MacDonalds.

Just walking my dogs each morning around my village, I could probably pick up enough new stuff to earn a dollar per walk – that $365 a year, tax free. Sounds good to me.

I believe my local Council pays to send its recyclable material to Mugga Lane, so in the future maybe the money will flow the other way.

Like the carbon tax this is a pollution tax – we currently don’t pay it, but it has a cost which is mostly social and environmental (i.e. pollution), rather than cash. So for 10c extra per container, which you can get back if you are organised enough, we all get a cleaner local environment and less landfill.

No different from pubs sending empty kegs and crates of empty bottles back to their suppliers, if this still happens (I haven’t worked in a pub for a while).

IP

gooterz said :

Didnt canberra already have this?

We had aluminium can recycling where you got paid by weight I believe? I remember collecting cans and taking them down as kids.

I like this. It wont stop bogans from throwing crap out of their car on the highway, but it might provide more incentive for some to withold or collect the rubbish.

Solidarity said :

So you want me to pay more for stuff, either in money form, or in time and effort form?

Yeah no. Go away.

You exist for society’s benefit, not the other way around. This sort of thing is how we paid to kill all the sabre-toothed tigers.

Recall Economics 101: its about recovering the cost of externalities. Of course the “soft drink and alcohol” companies are against it. And its been shown to be incredibly popular with the general populace.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/drink-makers-blow-their-tops-on-deposit-plan-20120528-1zfg6.html

Didnt canberra already have this?

I don’t think getting 10c back for recycling a bottle will be at the top of drunken idiots’ minds when making the choice whether to smash the bottle on the footpath or not. If there wasn’t already a good recycling scheme here I would support the idea, but it would create mixed messages when it came to people deciding what to put in the yellow top bins. I think they would be better off improving what we already have and educating people on what to recycle and where instead of creating new schemes for what we already do pretty well.

At the end of the day, there will still be complete morons who don’t do the right thing with either scheme. I don’t think a return to the old “cash4cans” scheme will improve anything.