My experience of the container return scheme in NSW Australia

I have always been in favour of a container return scheme as I grew up in the 1970's and can remember going with my Dad to drop off containers to get a refund. And we know from behavioural insights that incentives are a key tool for changing behaviour. However convenience and ease of use are also key when designing a scheme. So when I was in Australia for 3 weeks working and then 2 weeks as a tourist I was keen to check out their scheme to see how it worked.

1. Find a drop off location. I googled and easily found the return and earn website and typed in my location to find out that the nearest drop location was six km's away from our house and the only one in Wollongong. With a population of 216,00 I was surprised that there was only one drop off location in Wollongong and if we hadn't had a car it wouldn't have been possible. At our holiday destination in Jervis Bay it was a twenty five minute drive to a town we had no desire to visit so we used the kerbside recycling instead. In inner city Sydney it was a ten minute walk and in the Sydney suburbs it was a fifteen minute drive. We also stayed at a camp ground which had a collection bin which Rotary emptied as a fundraiser and stopped at a cafe which had made their own bins in their outdoor garden. The Wollongong council also put a wire container on the side of some its public place rubbish bins so that people could place there cans their. Verdict: fail - if you don't have a car then it's really hard to find a place to return your cans to but there were some enterprising community solutions

2. Using the machines. The machines themselves were very easy to use but there were a few wrinkles. When we arrived at the first machine the plastic and cans was full and we could only recycle our glass bottles so we had to drive to a second machine to recycle our plastic bottles. The machine wouldn't accept crushed items ( my husband caught on quick but it took me a while to figure it out lol). If the label had come off the bottle, it also wasn't accepted (which occurred for some items we had rescued off the beach) and then finally there were some brands which were fizzy drinks made with fruit juice which just didn't seem to be part of the scheme. Verdict: Fail I'm not sure why drinks using juice were excluded but I think it should be consistent across the material type ie all aluminum drink cans.

3. Getting your refund. This was super easy. Interestingly you couldn't choose which supermarket or which charity your refund could be used for. For the supermarket you were given a voucher which you had three years to use. Verdict: Pass

4. Were people using the scheme? yes and no. 10 cents as a refund didn't appear to be hugely motivating to get people to pick up litter or stop littering. 10 cents was first introduced as a refund back in South Australia in the 1970's which is the equivalent of 80 cents in today's money. We saw bottles dropped on the ground on beaches and near cycleways that had clearly been there for more than a few hours. We made over 70 cents ourselves from picking up other people's containers, and in one case intentionally didn't pick up a container until the next day to see if anyone else would. When speaking to friends and family some still placed their containers in their kerbside recycling, whereas others saved them up to give to friends who would use it to fundraise for their local charities. Verdict: research has shown that states without deposit schemes have more beachside drink litter than those without, but I was still disappointed with how many littered bottles and cans we saw on our travels.

What makes a successful scheme? From my admittedly only five weeks I think the key is:

• having a high enough deposit that people are motivated not to litter in the first place,
• convenient drop off locations that you can walk to not just drive to otherwise you won't get any tourists recycling
• something attached to every public place rubbish bin so that the bottles and cans can easily be retrieved by the homeless or young children eager for pocket money.

What do you think the elements of a successful scheme are?