Here’s a question – would you be more inclined to recycle your plastic bottles responsibly, if you were offered hard cash in return for them? A similar scheme to that which can be used to make money recycling aluminium cans…would you be interested?
As far as the government is concerned, it seems the answer is – yes. Or at least, considerably more people would make the effort to recycle plastic bottles responsibly upon the introduction of a deposit return scheme than do so right now.
Scotland has announced that its government will fully commit to a new deposit return scheme, which will apply to plastic and glass bottles, as well as standard cans. The idea being that single-use plastic waste will hopefully be brought under control, following a raft of revelations as to exactly how much damage waste plastic is causing worldwide.
Reports suggest that Scottish ministers are right now considering and discussing which DRS represents the best solution, balancing the concerns of environmental campaigners with those who oppose such a scheme.
Initially, the Coca Cola company voiced opposition to the scheme in Scotland, though backtracked when the media exposed the company’s apparent plan to prevent such a scheme being imposed. Nevertheless, other companies have made it clear that they will oppose any kind of DRS initiative laid out by the government.
One of which being Irn-Bru manufacturer Barr, having stated that any such scheme would be dangerously open to fraud and abuse in general. Nevertheless, experts including Catherine Gemmell of the Marine Conservation Society have stated that the initiative is no less than a fantastic step forward for the country’s recycling initiatives
“Unfortunately, over the last few years, we have seen a big increase across our beaches on bottles, on cans and on glass as well,” she said.
“This is why we think a deposit return system will have a huge impact on decreasing the amount that we’re finding on our beaches,”
“We had a huge success a couple of years ago with the 5p carrier bag charge – after that was put in place, we saw a 40% decrease in bags on our beaches, so we think deposit return is definitely the next best thing.”
Evidence would therefore suggest that such schemes can be highly effective – hence the support of John Mayhew, who spoke on behalf of the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland.
“That’s a really great move for Scotland and I’d also like to say how much we appreciate the support we’ve had from Sky News over the last year,” he said.
“We know that it will reduce litter, tackle climate change, it’ll boost our recycling rates in Scotland, it’ll save money for local authorities and it’ll produce better materials that we can use in our recycling industry.”
Though the specifics of the plan are yet to be ironed out and revealed, it is likely that the scheme will be similar to that which takes into account the weight of aluminium cans for recycling, in exchange for cash payments. Along with new initiatives at recycling centres, automated machines are likely to appear in more large supermarkets and shopping centres across the country, into which use plastic bottles can be deposited directly and the respective cash payment issued.
