{"id":7619,"date":"2019-02-18T03:15:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T03:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/stores-accused-of-watering-down-bottle-deposit-scheme\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T03:15:30","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T03:15:30","slug":"stores-accused-of-watering-down-bottle-deposit-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/stores-accused-of-watering-down-bottle-deposit-scheme\/","title":{"rendered":"Stores accused of ‘watering down’ bottle deposit scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Bottle deposit schemes were launched in some countries decades ago
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Large retailers have been accused of trying to water down a proposed scheme to improve rates of bottle recycling.<\/p>\n

Environmentalists say large and small drinks containers alike should carry a catch-all deposit of more than 15p.<\/p>\n

But retailers say small “on-the-go” bottles cause most litter, while large bottles are recycled by households and should not be subject to a deposit.<\/p>\n

Ministers are still considering whether to exempt bigger plastic containers from the plans. <\/p>\n

How do bottle recycling schemes work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The UK proposal, part of the Resources and Waste Strategy, is likely to copy one of the schemes adopted in other countries.<\/p>\n

In Norway for instance<\/a>, the shopper pays a deposit on every bottle – the equivalent of 10p to 25p depending on size.<\/p>\n

The consumer drinks the product, then posts the empty bottle into a machine which produces a coupon to return the deposit.<\/p>\n

This has led to recycling rates of 97% – whereas in the UK just over half of plastic bottles are recycled.<\/p>\n

Why do green activists insist big and small bottles are targeted?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Environmentalists are angry that the industry is still fighting plans to restrict deposits to small bottles.<\/p>\n

Samantha Harding from the group Campaign to Protect Rural England says the same firms currently attempting to obstruct a deposit scheme managed to kill a similar idea in 1981, when the industry promised to address recycling itself. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut look at the mess we\u2019re in now,\u201d she said. \u201cConsumption has rocketed while recycling has flat-lined.<\/p>\n

“Our countryside, rivers and oceans are choked with plastic. <\/p>\n

“And many drinks containers are collected so inefficiently their poor quality means we struggle to recycle them within the UK, and the rest of the world no longer wants them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Greenpeace said if the government introduced a \u201chalf-baked scheme\u201d limited to smaller bottles only, it would confuse customers and fail to stop millions of large containers being burned, dumped or ending up in the oceans.<\/p>\n

And Libby Peake from the think tank Green Alliance said litter wasn’t the only issue: “Introducing a deposit on all containers would improve the flow of materials into the recycling stream – that’ll be a major plus,” she told the BBC. <\/p>\n

She said: “There are people in the industry who are trying to water down the scheme to restrict it to on-the-go containers – and if they succeed that will definitely make it less efficient.”<\/p>\n

What does business say?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Andrew Opie, of the British Retail Consortium, said the best approach is to focus on cans and bottles drunk outside the home.<\/p>\n

A catch-all deposit would mean big bottles going into recycling machines rather than home recycling bins, he argued. This would remove a source of revenue for local councils, because plastic bottles are valuable for recycling.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cWe all want to see a world with no plastic pollution and high levels of recycling. <\/p>\n

“But at a time when many shops are being lost from our high streets, the Resources and Waste Strategy presents business with an additional \u00a33bn bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what happens now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ministers have opened formal consultations asking the public and industry which sort of scheme they should support. <\/p>\n

The consultations will last 12 weeks, and the government will later announce its final policy \u2013 decades after deposit return schemes were introduced in other countries.<\/p>\n

What else is in the waste strategy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bottle plan is part of a wide-reaching government strategy to change our relationship with waste. One environmentalist WHO? said it was \u201cunbelievably radical\u201d in some respects.<\/p>\n

The proposals are:<\/p>\n