Environment

The government has said it will not introduce a deposit scheme for drinks packaging as demanded by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).

Environment minister Joan Ruddock said: "Waste solutions have to make both environmental and economic sense if they are to be successful."

"Deposit and return schemes died out in this country because they did not make financial sense. Until their environmental benefits are clear cut, we are not currently persuaded that implementing them would be justified."

CPRE launched its Stop the Drop campaign this morning (16 April) and author Bill Bryson, who is also president of CPRE, urged the government to introduce a scheme that would pay out 10p for every can or bottle returned.

Similar schemes are already in place in Australia, Germany, Sweden and the US.

"Litter is becoming the default condition of the countryside. It's time that we – all of us – did something about this," said Bryson.

Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (Incpen) director Jane Bickerstaffe, although "100% behind" an anti-litter campaign, said putting a deposit on drinks containers was a "piecemeal" idea and it would be impossible to put it on every bottle or can.

"Increasingly drinks manufacturers such as Coca-Cola and GlaxoSmithKline are sending their containers to recycling systems. If a deposit were put on the bottles and cans, it would divert them out of recycling and into deposit schemes and would mean two lots of lorries on the roads. It doesn't add up when we're trying to reduce emissions and encourage people to recycle," she said.

"Littering is a behavioural problem and the solution would be a comprehensive approach to keeping places clean, educating consumers that it is anti-social to drop litter, and enforcing existing penalties."

British Glass recycling manager Rebecca Cocking said the glass industry was not against a deposit scheme "if that is what our customers want", but there were "environmental negatives" to transporting bottles to deposit schemes from different parts of the country.

"We also don't know how it would work with regard to the retail sector wishing to maximise space in store," she added.

British Plastics Federation director general Peter Davis agreed that there were serious environmental "dis-benefits" to a deposit scheme and said more education and more bins in large public spaces were needed.

Cocking said there would also be concerns that imported products would put UK glass manufacturers at a disadvantage because they could end up coming into the market at a cheaper price, while UK manufacturers would have to put prices up to account for the 10p deposit.

Details of the CPRE's Stop the Drop campaign are available at www.cpre.org.uk

Photo credit: Chris Leslie/CPRE