Don’t let container scheme burden our hospitality businesses

Recycling plan good for environment, but it must avoid adding to costs, writes Steve Old

AS we (hopefully) emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, now is not the time to burden businesses and households with additional costs as a result of an overly complicated container recycling scheme.

We all know that 2020 was an incredibly tough year, and we are all desperately hoping for a better 2021 and beyond.

Tasmania’s hospitality and tourism sector suffered worse than anyone, and many are still suffering. When the statewide lockdown was imposed last year, pubs, clubs, nightclubs and restaurants were forced to close first. And while those that survived are now back operating again, it’s often overlooked that even today, with Tasmania having to my knowledge never (touch wood) having recorded a case of community transmission, we are still operating under capacity limits imposed by the government.

While all of our overheads remain unchanged, this effective cap on revenue makes it really hard for any business to operate profitably. Just imagine if your business was forced to turn customers away, even though you have capacity to do the work, because of government restrictions.

Add to that the real kick-inthe-guts that was the Christmas/New Year border closures to Sydney, parts of Melbourne and then Brisbane, which cost many bookings and rocked confidence in interstate travel.

There is no doubt that over the past year, JobKeeper and JobSeeker have been a saviour, keeping businesses’ heads above water and importantly helping Tasmanians to financially get through these tough times.

However, both of these are planned to finish in March, which will leave a real hole in Tasmania’s economy.

Against this backdrop, life goes on — as it should. And soon, the state government will announce how they plan to implement a policy to introduce a container recycling scheme in Tasmania.

As key stakeholders, the Tasmanian Hospitality Association supports the introduction of a container recycling scheme, but we think that it is vitally important that the government scheme has the least possible impact on businesses and individuals, particularly in this COVID-19 era.

There is no doubt that a container recycling scheme offers great environmental benefits for our state, and will help to significantly reduce litter.

It will also provide a great opportunity for community and sporting groups to raise money by collecting drink containers.

But we do need to remember: nothing in life comes for free, and that includes a container recycling scheme.

The reason that individuals and community groups will be able to claim 10c for every container they collect is because drink prices will be increased to pay for it.

So while a hypothetical increase of 10c a container mightn’t sound much, if you think about a slab of beer with 24 cans, that means an increase of $2.40 for the 10c deposits alone. Given a slab of beer typically retails for about $50, that equates to a price increase of about 5 per cent. That’s before the costs of scheme operations are added.

Just exactly how much this increase will be will depend upon the design and efficiency of the container recycling scheme. For example, the additional cost per container (plus the 10c refund) of collection in the NSW scheme is 9.3c, whereas the Queensland scheme (where return rates have been higher than in NSW) it is 8.6c – that’s nearly 10 per cent cheaper.

No doubt, Tasmania is unique in many ways and that we can’t simply cut and paste a scheme from another jurisdiction, but nor do we need to reinvent the wheel.

Every other state (bar Victoria) now has a container recycling scheme in operation, and it is already clear that not only are those schemes with the simplest design the most efficient to operate, they provide more benefits and more money back to the communities that are paying for the scheme through increased prices, and they have the best environmental results.

The THA and our members stand ready to work with the government in implementing a container recycling scheme, and we urge the government to ensure its scheme design is the most efficient and effective as possible.