The inclusion of glass wine and spirit bottles in Queensland’s container refund scheme is a significant move on glass recycling that should be mirrored by other states asap.
There is enormous public, recycling, retail, packaging and beverage industry support for this* and the consequent bottle to bottle recycling. The Qld move should give comfort to other states like NSW, WA, NT and South Australia and they should follow suit.
Economic research commissioned by the South Australian government shows clear financial and community benefits. Obviously, there will be no adverse impact on sales from the very small deposit and Scheme handling fee.
Container deposit schemes have been very successful here and overseas and are a firm foundation upon which to build more circular economy measures. Australia needs to ramp up action on meeting the 2025 national packaging targets, of which product bottles are an important item.
* National Retailers Association, Australian Council of Recycling, Australian Packaging Covenant, Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association, Reloop, Australian Beverages Council.
Omnipoll, Dec 2022 – over 90% support in each CDS state
