Operating alone, CDL would reduce the domestic waste stream's volume by around 20 percent - almost twice the amount collected by kerbside [24]. But paper and compostable material, which consume a further 60 percent of landfill space, still need to be collected. It's not a question of 'CDL or kerbside?'. It's a matter of using the right 'tool' for the job. Deposits for containers - kerbside for paper and compostable material.
Container deposit systems operate throughout the world. Typically they achieve high return rates (approaching 100%) and encourage re-use as well as recycling. By contrast, the kerbside collection of drink containers in Australia achieves low return rates, fails to encourage re-use, suffers collection inefficiencies, is uneconomic for councils, requires a significant level of subsidisation by rate-payers, and increases drink prices to consumers.
By failing to encourage re-use the kerbside collection and recycling of containers is also made difficult to justify on environmental grounds. In some cases the extra resource consumption and pollution generation of the collection and recycling process means it does more harm than good.
While the introduction of CDL would provide a clear view of the materials in the recycling and waste streams that do not pay their own way, the economics of kerbside is a complicated affair. For example, under the present kerbside collection scheme glass subsidises the collection of other materials. But long-term cross-subsidisation of materials is not a desirable option if the success of a comprehensive waste minimisation strategy is to be ensured - just as long-term subsidisation of a product or activity is unjustifiable within the business sector.
Why should glass subsidise the collection and recycling of plastic and other materials? Should not each material begin to pay its own way? Surely the glass industry would be the first to agree - unless of course it is being maintained merely as a guise to protect the interests of its 'big brother' the plastics industry1.
Once aware of the plastic industry's ownership of the glass industry it is not difficult to see that plastic will continue to replace glass wherever it can. This will make recycling collection and waste disposal services even more expensive for local government, and therefore the community.
While councils and contract recyclers regard glass as the most valued material in the domestic recycling stream, how much thought has been given to the long-term viability of the multi-material kerbside collection service? Plastic already accounts for almost twice the weight of glass and more than 10 times its volume in the domestic waste stream (see "Waste Stream Analysis" - Appendix III). As plastic continues to replace glass, and the community continues to demand that more material be collected for recycling, the cost of providing such services will spiral upwards.
The industry-sponsored campaign to discredit CDL, which will inevitably precede its introduction, should instead be seen as a valuable opportunity to also reform kerbside. The introduction of CDL would allow kerbside to be streamlined, collecting fewer, more suitable materials - namely paper and compostables. It should be financed by appropriate industries and perhaps the state government until viable in its own right. In this way kerbside can earn its place beside CDL as a serious waste minimisation initiative.
To lay-to-rest the packaging industry's claim that CDL and kerbside cannot work together, consider the conclusion of a recent study by the Seattle Solid Waste Utility [27]:
"In short, a bottle bill [CDL] would divert additional tonnage with no significant impact to either City costs or curbside recycling profits."
To quote from a March 1992 report by the Washington DC based Container Recycling Institute [28]:
"The sun appears to be setting on the 'deposit-systems-destroy-curbside recycling' anti-bottle bill argument."
1 The Australian glass industry is, in fact, now owned and controlled by the multinational rubber and plastics company BTR Nylex. Much to the displeasure of the Trade Practices Commission [25]&[26] BTR Nylex now monopolises glass production in Australia, having acquired ACI in 1988 and Smorgon's Glass Containers in 1991.