International Review of Waste Management Policy - Department of ...

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29/09/09
A national CDS [container deposit scheme] is expected to provide the greatest
reduction in overall litter levels, with the potential to provide a 6% reduction in
the total national litter count and a 19% reduction in the total national litter
volume.
Finally, there is another way in which removal of used beverage containers from litter
could contribute to cleaner streets. To the extent that beverage containers are
relatively voluminous items, then their removal from litter bins would leave more room
for other waste. The CPRE’s Litterbugs report reports that 91% of the public believe
that increasing the number of bins is the most effective way of reducing litter. 358 An
equivalent approach might be to free up space in existing bins. The report cites the
New York bottle bill as reducing container litter by 70-80%. Clean-up costs, as well as
landfill costs, were reduced. The scheme enjoys solid public support (84% of voters in
2004) and so has been extended in 2009 to cover non-carbonated drinks, which
make up 27% of beverage sales.
16.6.4 Other Benefits
It has been suggested that deposit refund schemes are one way to increase materials
recovery, and can give the best environmental benefits, but that they may be
expensive to implement. Arguably they therefore suit cases in which it is important
from a safety or environmental standpoint not to let materials go unrecovered such
as lead acid batteries or empty pesticide containers. However, the differential
externalities associated with recycling materials as opposed to discarding them in
refuse, are not insignificant in the case of packaging. We calculate, for example, that
these may be of the order €723 per tonne for aluminium, €111 per tonne for steel,
€150-200 for plastic and €25 per tonne for glass (the higher values for plastic relate
to the effects of incineration of plastic as opposed to its landfilling). In other words,
these benefits are non-trivial, though they have to be set in context against the costs
of collection.
In countries or states where deposit refund schemes have worked in the past, they
are often popular with the public, helping to gain impetus for the recycling initiative.
For example, there are movements in a number of states in Australia and the USA to
implement these schemes.
16.6.5 Implications for Transport
Perchards suggest that in Ireland, introducing a deposit scheme would be
unfavourable from an environmental point of view partly owing to duplication in
logistics: 359
358 A. Lewis, P. Turton and T. Sweetman (2009) Litterbugs How to Deal with the Problem of Littering,
Report for CPRE, March 2009.
359 G. Bevington (2008) A Deposit and Refund Scheme in Ireland, Report commissioned by Repak Ltd.,
September 2008.