Plans are being considered to impose a national deposit/recycling scheme on bottles, cans and all manner of containers - similar to the ten cent laws that apply in South Australia.
What works in a relatively small state may not be so manageable in large cities like Sydney and Melbourne.
It is said that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it - and a deposit on containers is not new. We had such a scheme in place just after the end of the second world war - and it was dropped because it was a failure.
At that time, the retailer was responsible for repaying the deposit and collecting the returned containers until they could be returned to their manufacturer. This resulted in valuable retail space being lost - and an unsightly and unhygienic mess at supermarkets and corner stores.
The theory was that parks and beaches would become pristine because kids and teenagers would happily collect discarded containers - and return them to gain extra pocket money.
That completely ignored the whims of child minds. It became " uncool " for kids to cash in discarded containers - and most kids would not be seen dead by their peers heading to the shop with a pile of discards.
Being " cool " is almost a cult similar to religion. When did you last see a kid wearing a regulation school hat ? Or wearing a raincoat on a wet day ?
Deposit/recycling may be possible, but it will require more than just casual thinking to create a system that actually works - and creative thinking is not the usual way that government bodies go about doing things !
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