Comments on: Whingers and rentseekers owe taxpayers billions in wasted time

By: daveliberts

daveliberts — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:16:40 +0000

As a South Australian with long experience of container deposits, I feel it’s a very good scheme which has broad community support and succeeds in keeping a lot of containers out of landfill or litter.

The bimonthly act of packing up the cans and bottles and driving them over to the local recycling place is part of my routine. You can quite often get enough for a sixpack of beer to start the next collection going. If the kids help, they share in the spoils.

I struggle to believe that Coke’s South Australian sales are down because of container deposits and am astonished at their campaign.

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Sat, 23 May 2009 07:09:35 +0000

GREG ANGELO; what does externalities mean?

By: Chris Gulland

Chris Gulland — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:45:42 +0000

recyclable bottles, cans and dairy milk containers seem an easy mark, what about cigarette stubs?

By: Greg Angelo

Greg Angelo — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:05:33 +0000

This will be a real test for the environmental credentials of the government. Factoring in the cost of externalities associated with waste disposal would mean that the consumer of the product bears the whole cost and not just the direct cost of manufacturing and distribution.

Placing a deposit on every rigid container including tin cans, glass and plastic bottles, and requiring manufacturers to redeem the deposit would have a massive effect on reducing discarded waste, and provide an opportunity for waste collection agencies such as local government to recover the cost of waste disposal from customers who choose to dispose of their containers through the recycling rubbish system.

It is well known that the disposable container has led to massive concentrations in the food and beverage industries because these manufacturers do not bear recycling their rubbish.