Right: Clean Up Australia Day founder Ian Kiernan, writing for the ABC, said, "Tonnes of bottles and cans are dumped in our environment every year - and our growing obsession with bottled water means the problem is only going to get bigger".Further implications
The BDA and Wright report estimates kerbside collection recovers about 78 per cent of beverage containers in Australia at a cost of $300 a tonne, while SA's container deposit scheme recovers 6 per cent of the national total at close to double the cost a tonne.These figures are somewhat misleading as one of the main areas of concern is not containers of drinks consumed within the home, but those that are drunk away from home and left as litter.
Clean Up Australia Day data indicates that South Australia does far better at reducing roadside litter than other states. The difficulty is that it is not possible to institute a deposit scheme that applies only to beverages drunk outside the home.
We are in a situation where we have a very efficient kerbside collection scheme operating in most states which collects a high percentage of the containers of drinks consumed within the home but not those consumed elsewhere. As a society we have to decide whether we are prepared to pay for a relatively expensive container deposit scheme to remove that proportion of container litter currently not being disposed of responsibly.
A number of surveys have indicated that Australian consumers are willing to pay the additional costs associated with removing container litter from our roadsides, waterways and beaches. It is an unfortunate irony that deposits may make our kerbside collection more expensive. Again, however, this would appear to be a cost most ratepayers are prepared to meet. This may be one of a number of environmental issues where the electorate is ready to support pro-active policies while their governments are more cautious.