On Tuesday What we need is a deposit return scheme
RUBBISH. It seems that it is just everywhere at the moment. I wasn’t referring to the contents of this column (though feel free to disagree), or even the statements of our political leaders. I mean plain old litter.
Whether you’re walking along the streets, strolling the town or city centres or driving along a major road, it feels like everywhere you look there is detritus of some kind.
The apparently ever-increasing volume of waste we produce is even clogging up our waterways, floating on our ocean and sinking down to the seabed – just read about the unpaid efforts of those groups who go out to try to clean up places left spoiled by our trash.
While these valiant efforts should be applauded, there is surely far more that could be done to clamp down on this problem.
One project to clean up our ailing environment found that more than half of all identifiable litter could be traced back to 10 brands. Just 10.
Step forward Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Cadbury, Red Bull, Walkers, Lucozade, Stella Artois, Tesco, Budweiser and Strongbow. In fact, the packaging of just three drinks giants made up almost a quarter of all the branded litter found in 2021 during an annual count by users of the clean-up app Planet Patrol: CocaCola, PepsiCo and Heineken.
More than 85,000 pieces of litter were recorded by around 5,400 users of an app which logs rubbish across the UK as it is picked up and properly disposed of.
The figures make the drinks industry responsible for more than a third of all litter found in 2020 and 2021, with cans, plastic and glass bottles and single-use cups and lids making up 23% of litter which was logged.
The makers of those brands would say littering is not down to them, and that is fair enough, as the burden of responsibility lies with the consumer – so what’s the answer?
Those behind the clean-up project say a deposit return scheme would help.
That means that consumers face a small deposit when purchasing their drinks bottles or cans (a matter of pence added to the cost) which can then be reclaimed when they are taken to a collection point.
It sounds unworkable, but what it effectively does is offer a financial incentive to those picking up this type of litter and depositing it back.
It’s been done elsewhere, and I’ve seen first-hand that it can work.
I was in China on a year teaching English, now more than 20 years ago, and such a scheme was in operation. Hence you would never see cans or bottles lying around – they had been snapped up by collectors, usually wizened old men with huge plastic sacks full of discarded containers.
They might only get a few jiao (the Chinese equivalent of pence) per can or bottle, but, once they had amassed a huge sackful, it became worthwhile.
Campaigners say a similar scheme would be worth it here.
Chances are that if you have been to a sporting event or concert, you’ve seen it work yourself. You buy a drink in a plastic cup, and can choose to take it home at the end of the day, or return it for some money back – maybe £1.
Some are happy to leave their cups behind, which are quickly collected by others who then have a huge stack of cups which they return to the bar. That probably goes a way to paying their beer money.
Heineken, for the record, say they are already involved in a deposit return scheme in Scotland, and are engaged in a similar one for England and Wales, creating what is known as a ‘closed loop’ solution, while CocaCola said they strongly support the idea. Let’s just hope their statements aren’t, well, a load of rubbish.
The drinks industry was responsible for more than a third of all litter found in 2020 and 2021