Plastic bottles: British retailers push back their deposits

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The government is currently considering whether bottle deposits should apply to all beverage containers or limited to containers of 750 milliliters (26.4 fluid ounces) or less.

Environmental groups overwhelmingly support the first option, while retailers go to great lengths for the second. Buyers would recover the deposit when their bottles are recycled.

The British Retail Consortium said Monday in a statement that the deposit initiative should focus on cans and bottles consumed outside the home.

Applying the plan to all containers would "undermine existing household collection systems" and "make life more difficult for households that can currently recycle these items in the comfort of their homes".

The trade group, which represents the main sellers, including Tesco (TSCDF), Whole foods, McDonalds (MCD) and Ikea, warned that setting up the program could cost up to 2 billion pounds ($ 2.6 billion).
UK government plans to set up deposit system for beverage packaging

About half of the 13 billion plastic bottles sold each year in the UK are recycled. Others go to landfills, are burned in incinerators – which can cause air pollution – or end up in the streets, rivers and beaches of the country.

Environmental activists have warned the government against excluding large bottles from the deposit program.

Surfers Against Sewage announced Monday that, on a cleanup in October, of 27,696 drinks containers that volunteers collected on beaches and rivers, 58% were 750 milliliters or more. Group CEO Hugo Tagholm said the world's most efficient deposit deposit systems covered all bottle sizes.

Greenpeace UK said a program limited to small bottles would "confuse customers" and would not capture "millions" of larger bottles that would then end up in landfills, incinerators or oceans.

European Parliament supports ban on single-use plastics

Retailers use the same arguments that led the British parliament to reject a similar initiative 40 years ago, according to the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England.

"The decision to reject a draft law on beverage containers in 1981 (…) was taken on the grounds that the industry itself would take care of the waste that it produced", said the group in a statement. He stated that these "were only empty promises."

Similar programs are already in place in other European countries, including Germany. The return rate of beverage containers has reached 98% in Germany, according to the government.

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Some small test programs have also been successful in Britain.

The Iceland supermarket chain, which has more than 900 stores across the country, said customers at four stores had returned 311,500 bottles over six months for a purchase price of 10p ($ 0.13). .

Consumer goods groups are also experimenting with other ways to further recycle their packaging. Procter & Gamble (PG), Unilever (UL)Nestlé and others are working together on the Loop project, which will offer consumers in Paris, New York and other cities the opportunity to reuse their packaging. After using the products, customers place empty containers on their doors to have them picked up and filled.

The UK government launched Monday a 12-week consultation period on the deposit proposal, which is part of a new recycling policy that provides for potential new taxes for producers whose packaging is harder to recycle.

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