With all States and Territories have introduced a Container Refund Scheme, it's time for the longer established schemes to improve their performance. The new schemes such as Tasmania can follow in due course.

The goal of the container refund schemes is to reduce litter and waste and increase recycling of eligible beverage containers. As we speak, on average across all established schemes, the return rate is (65%) with South Australia a little higher but now reducing at (74%). That means that about one third of containers used are still being littered or landfilled.

In the best container refund schemes in Europe the return rate is well over 90%, a rate we should be able to achieve in Australia.

To achieve this return rate and to improve the schemes around the country, the Boomerang Alliance is calling for;

• An increase to the container refund to 20 cents, to provide more incentives to return containers
• Make the return of containers more convenient by including collection points at shopping centres and retail precincts
• Increase the containers collected by the scheme to include wine and spirit bottles (already included in QLD), other glass containers, other plastic containers such as milk cartons and large juice and require all bottle tops to be tethered to their bottles
• Include reusable drink containers as eligible for collection under the scheme

For more information on our 20 cent campaign and CRS improvements