Group shows its bottle

Student activist group Plastic Diet have launched an appeal for Container Deposit Legislation (CDL) by holding a Cash for Containers day at the University of Auckland where they paid students 20 cents each for their used beverage containers. Over 1100 containers were collected.

“Walking along the beach and finding plastic drink bottles is really heart breaking and completely preventable. If New Zealand had CDL we would boost recycling rates in New Zealand, create jobs and reduce waste going into landfills,” said Plastic Diet president Florence Reynolds.

Introducing CDL to New Zealand would see a small charge added to the cost of beverages at the point of purchase. Customers would be able to redeem this deposit when they return the empty container to a recycling depot.

Plastic Diet claims that New Zealand’s current recovery rate for beverage containers of 30-40 per cent is near the bottom of the international scale compared to countries that have CDL, where recovery rates of 80-90 per cent are common.