10 cents per can. One dollar for ten cans. Ten dollars for a hundred cans.
Victoria’s Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) went live in November 2023, whereby prices (or at least input costs) of drinks sold in aluminium cans and plastic bottles increased to cover the new 10 cent per can ‘deposit’ that could be refunded if the can is returned to a collection centre.
The stated aims of the scheme read like so much deluded utopian vision of warriors who love spending tax payer money on pet projects:
CDS Vic is part of the Victorian Government's $515 million investment to transform the state's waste and recycling sector. Funded by contributions from the beverage industry, the scheme will contribute to Victoria's target of diverting 80% of all material away from landfill by 2030 and represents a significant milestone in our journey towards a circular economy.
Victorians use more than 3 billion drink containers every year. Sadly, many are not recycled, ending up in landfill and as litter in local communities across our state.
CDS Vic aims to:
Increase recycling and reduce litter, cleaning up our environment
Be convenient and accessible with many types and locations of refund points across Victoria
Bring new jobs and economic opportunities for individuals, charity and community groups
$515 million investment? That’s a lot of cans. Funded by extorting the beverage industry, who if they’ve got any brains will shift their operations elsewhere. As for the ‘aims’ of the scheme, not a single one of them is measurable in a way that could be attributed to the scheme, and not confounded by other factors. And of course there’s never a baseline or a stated quantifiable target. Reduce litter? By how much? How will you know if it has worked? When will you check for success? What will you do if the targets are not met? (We already know the answer to the last question, if the prior ones ever get answered: if the targets aren’t met it’s because we didn’t throw enough money at it, so we’ll spend ANOTHER $500 million.")
Victorians already sort their rubbish as unpaid labour into one of 4 different household bins, collected by firms contracted by local councils. The streets and parks are not awash with empty cans of Coke. Sure, some people litter, but 10 cents a pop is not going to stop them.
Just as some people collect ‘reward’ points for shopping here or there, or collect tokens from the newspaper, or participate in various other schemes, I suppose some people, perhaps these same ones, will set up their own way of storing then returning cans to collection points for 10 cents a pop. But I suspect most people won’t be bothered. “I already put cans in the yellow recycling bin, I’ll just keep doing that.”
But there are people for whom 10 cents a can might make all the difference between going hungry or buying enough ingredients for a school lunch. These folk might swallow their pride and establish some kind of routine or method for cashing in. A car with a boot load of cans? Saved from home or scavenged from bins? How long does it take to collect a hundred cans? To earn 10 bucks? To buy 500 grams of mince?
And yet the irony is that, cannibalising that sea of cans lying around ankle deep on our streets, various ‘donation partners’ are invited to join the scheme, and register to receive the 10 cents per can that would otherwise have been paid to the person who collected it, in cash or supermarket vouchers. So rather than being the difference between a full or empty lunchbox, well organised groups (like Scouts, say, or a junior footy club) are likely to reap the benefits. The pickings for those genuinely trying to use the scheme as a way to supplement meagre income from other sources, and fill a lunchbox, could be thin.
The equation gets even more morally cloudy when the ‘donation partner’ is itself a charity. Let’s say a local church joins the scheme, with their Op Shop front and centre as the charity which can receive donations. Who do we imagine will be collecting and returning cans, and what will make them select the Op Shop as the beneficiary of their efforts? If a team of retired volunteers from the congregation gets organised and saves their beer cans, then returns them to the collection point, then selects the church Op Shop as the beneficiary, who has really gained? The Op Shop has gained the $10 for the two and a bit slabs of beer, whereupon the $10 goes into consolidated revenue for the church, of which 10% is likely to be given away to other good causes. So the church retains $9, having been part of a sleight of hand which sees cans that would ordinarily have gone in the recycling bin anyway, siphoned off to be recycled via a different pathway.
Not many people will go to the trouble of finding those cans which were not already going to end up in the recycling bin. Kids, maybe, saving for a bike? But I wouldn’t want my kids elbow deep in a street side bin, or worse, trying to get into one of those automatic compactor bins. A cut hand waiting to happen, and infection, or worse perhaps, definitely possible.
So who’s left, to be the duffer who is the one to “Increase recycling and reduce litter, cleaning up our environment”? Who will end up as a scavenger for the cans that aren’t systematically hoarded and laundered through the scheme? Only the poor, working all day to get a hundred cans, for 10 bucks.
That’s what $515 million buys you these days.
Fully agree with the sentiments here. In the old days, the collector crushed the cans, taken to a central point and was paid by weight. Most of the money for this scheme appears to have been invested into point of collection scanners, mechanical crushing etc. Once again, bureaucracy creates inefficiencies.
I was fascinated and somewhat outraged when I noticed a 10c levy on the invoice from one of my drinks suppliers... so the beverage industry is paying for this.
I took my children to one just a stones throw from our house yesterday to check it out.
Broken glass all over beneath their bare feet.
A few people had diligently collected up hundreds of their containers from home.. I casually enquired as to whether they would be doing this again, and the reply was a resounding "no." Cannot redeem for cash apparently.