The UK government’s announcement that it is considering introducing in England is great news. Currently only 40 to 70 per cent of plastic bottles are recycled, .
Recycling can produce a lot of carbon dioxide but generally far less than making new plastic from scratch. According to one 2015 study, for instance, recycling 1 tonne of the PET plastic commonly used to make drinks bottles .
The downside is that recycling plastic is expensive – in emissions terms, you could get far more bang for your buck by So it matters who pays for recycling.
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Deposit return schemes have already been introduced in many places around the world, including some states in the US and Australia as well as several countries in Europe. In some places the recycling rate has risen to more than 90 per cent as a result.
Producer pays
Even more importantly, as long as people return the bottles they buy, most of the costs of recycling should be borne by the companies making and selling plastic bottles. Indeed, you may be surprised to learn that the principle that the producers of packaging should pay for managing the waste . It is known as “extended producer responsibility”.
In many EU countries, the producers or importers of products packaged in plastic have to pay most or all of the costs of recovering and recycling it. But the UK is one of the odd ones out. It only makes packaging producers pay around 10 per cent of the costs. Instead, the bulk of the burden is borne by local councils and thus ultimately by those paying local taxes.
Critics say the system and encouraged the export of plastic waste abroad. The government says the system works fine, thank you very much.
But with China refusing to take any more plastic waste, it is far from clear what is going to happen to all the UK’s plastic waste now. In the short term, it is possible that all the bottles returned under the proposed scheme will simply pile up with nowhere to go. What is clear is that without drastic reforms, local taxpayers will continue to foot the bill.
And of course dealing with waste plastic is just part of the problem. We need to tackle the inexorable rise in the use of plastics too, but that is another story.
