A LOT OF BOTTLE

As of December 2017, residents of

NSW will be financially rewarded for returning bottles and cans for recycling under the Return and Earn container deposit scheme. Up to 180 ‘reverse vending machines’, already a familiar sight in some European cities, have been put in place near Woolworths stores across the state. You feed in used glass, PET and HDPE bottles, and aluminium, steel and liquid paperboard (LPB) drinks containers, and a 10c credit is returned for each item. (NB Some containers, such as plastic milk bottles and glass wine bottles, are not eligible, although still recyclable.)

“Your refund can be redeemed via a transfer to your bank account through PayPal, as a Woolworths voucher or passed on to a charity,” says Peter Bruce, CEO of Exchange For Change, the organisation coordinating the Return and Earn program. NSW is the first state to roll out reverse vending machines and it’s hoped there will eventually be 500. “Drink containers currently account for 44 per cent of littered items in NSW,” says Bruce. “The Premier’s goal is to reduce the volume of litter across the state by 40 per cent by 2020, and reverse vending machines will be instrumental in achieving this.”

There is one important difference between other refund programs and the reverse vending machines. “We want your bottles and cans whole, not crushed,” says Bruce.