New South Wales on the other hand has blundered itself into a waste disposal crisis. The realisation of this has given rise to sudden 'panic' from all corners of the political arena. With waste now firmly on the political agenda, NSW has the ready-made opportunity to introduce CDL (as part of a wider strategy to reduce all waste) which improves on the SA model.

Figure 4 illustrates how CDL would work for NSW.

The following sections describe specific features of the legislation proposed for NSW. Divergences from the SA model are identified by italics.

CONTAINERS

Initially, only containers for beverages will be covered by the Act.

In SA certain containers are exempt from the provisions of the Act. This has caused some problems including the disappearance of milk in refillable glass. To avoid such problems, and claims of discrimination, all beverage containers will be covered by the NSW Act.

The Act includes a schedule of products for which a deposit should apply to their containers.

The SA Act is limited to beverage containers. The incorporation of a schedule in the NSW Act allows other products, whose containers are currently in the waste stream, to be added as desired.

eg. Detergent could be added to the schedule so that all types of detergent containers would be required to carry a deposit.

DEPOSIT

A refundable deposit, reflecting the true cost of the container, will apply to all containers covered by the Act. Initially this would be set at 20 cents with a review of the deposit amount on all containers once the system is operational.

A deposit of either 5 or 10 cents applies to containers covered by the SA Act. Although these deposit amounts result in good return rates, the higher deposit amount proposed for NSW would achieve correspondingly higher returns.

The deposit would be imposed by the filler/importer of the container and passed on at each stage of distribution to the consumer.

Exemptions from the scheme will be allowed for specific cases such as for home delivery milk vendors and other systems achieving more than 10 refills for their containers.

POINT-OF-SALE RETURN

Payment of a deposit by consumers gives them the opportunity for point-of-sale return of containers to retail outlets. Retailers are obliged to accept from consumers containers of the type they supply.

Similarly, fillers/importers are obliged to accept from retailers containers of the type they supply.

Return of the container to the filler/importer would ensure they are ultimately responsible for refilling, recycling or disposing of the containers they choose to supply.

In SA only certain containers can be returned to the point-of-sale. The remainder must be returned to collection depots. To avoid the unnecessary cost and inefficiency of collection depots, payment of a deposit in NSW will give consumers the choice of returning containers to either retail outlets or via alternative collection schemes.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMPETITION TO POINT-OF-SALE RETURN

In keeping with the landmark "Ordinance on the Avoidance of Packaging Waste" recently introduced in Germany, the establishment of collection schemes to compete with point-of-sale return is not precluded by the NSW Act. Pressure from retailers and fillers for example may persuade container manufacturers to establish, promote and maintain collection schemes which divert material from point-of-sale return. The establishment of drop-off centres or house-to- house collection schemes could thereby avoid the need for containers to be returned to retailers.

Alternatively, private businesses, local councils or community organisations could establish and benefit from their own operation of such collection schemes.

The aim of establishing and operating such schemes should be to provide an even more effective and efficient collection system than point-of-sale return, rather than as a mere public relations exercise, as is often the case now.

Collection depots for deposit-bearing containers were being operated by industry in SA long before CDL was introduced and were therefore incorporated in the SA Act. Since such depots do not already exist in NSW they have not been included in the NSW Act. However, the NSW Act does not preclude such depots or other competitive alternatives to point-of-sale return being established.

Regardless of the manner of collection, consumers would remain entitled to a full refund of deposit.

ADMINISTRATION

A minimal amount of administration would be required by fillers/importers to:

• keep records of transactions involving deposit bearing containers, and,
• contribute to an unclaimed deposits fund.

A Container Deposit Advisory Committee, established under the Act, would:

• monitor the success of the system by determining the return rate of containers, and,
• oversee spending of the unclaimed deposits fund to promote/improve the deposit system and increase the return rate of containers.

Unclaimed deposits are used to subsidise collection depots in SA. Since no such subsidy is necessary in NSW these funds can be used to improve the overall performance of the scheme or promote other aspects of waste reduction.