How the NSW CDS has failed in its fight against litter

A damning report in The Australian has revealed the NSW government has exaggerated "by more than fourfold" the benefits of its container deposit scheme.

Its analysis reveals consumers are being charged more than $5 for every can and bottle that does not become public litter each year.

The report notes the scheme is costing taxpayers at least $215 million a year to deliver savings of just $40.5million to the state government and local councils, which is just 25% of the total cost of picking up littered bottles and cans each year.

It says that a selective use of figures "substantially exaggerates the benefits of the scheme."

"In its NSW Litter Prevention Strategy 2017-20, the NSW government sets out its litter forecasts, which are based on figures calculated by Keep Australia Beautiful as part of its 'national litter index'."

However, the Keep Australia Beautiful figures show that just 9% of all items of public litter in NSW are bottles and cans, less than takeaway containers, which make up 12% of all litter.

"If the NSW government is successful in reducing the number of cans and bottles entering the litter stream by 25%, that means cans and bottles will comprise 6.75% of all public litter, instead of 9%. That is a reduction in the overall number of pieces entering the public 'litter stream' each year of 2.25%."

In a second report, The Australian says: "The waste company operator of NSW’s embattled anti-litter bottle and can deposit scheme has split with the state government and the major beverage companies 'co-ordinating' the project, claiming its forecasts for container deposits in the scheme’s first three months were less than one-third of the official published estimates.

During the first month of the NSW CDS, returns were just 9.2% of those forecast by Exchange for Change. In the first three months, they were just 28% of that forecast.

David Clancy, the director of TOMRA Cleanaway, told The Australian the ­actual results in the first three months of the scheme were “within our original volume forecasts” and had been based on the substantial experience of the two member companies.

NSW Environment Minster Gabrielle Upton said the published forecasts were prepared by Exchange for Change and were “not a target nor is it a government commitment”.

"Exchange for Change chief executive Peter Bruce said for the scheme to operate his company needed to raise money from beverage suppliers to make the 10c returns to consumers, and so it had taken a 'conservative view' when drawing up the forecasts and had made assumptions which 'had not materialised'."

Massive litter issues created by CDS throughout NSW

Numerous Return and Earn sites in NSW are becoming dumping groups for cartons and boxes used by residents to take eligible bottles and cans to the machines, plus containers rejected by the scheme. 

Less than a week after opening, the site of the Rutherford Return and Earn reverse vending machine was inundated with rubbish, leaving a mess residents have described as a “disgrace”.

Maitland MP Jenny Aitchison told The Maitland Mercury she agreed that people "should quite rightly take responsibility for their own rubbish."

However, she said the lack of locations nearby to dispose of the garbage was “indicative of how stupid the roll-out is”. 

Orange MP Phil Donato posted photographs of its reverse vending machine on his Facebook page showing stacks of boxes and bags left next to the rubbish bins nearby.

“It looked like an absolute disgrace, it was like a garbage dump,” he said. 

Labor confesses it will keep the scheme

 Despite admitting it isn’t working, Shadow Environment Minister Penny Sharpe told 2GB that if Labor wins the next election, they’ll keep the scheme and aim to “fix it”.

“This has been the case study of what not to do,” she Chris Kenny.

“Labor won’t be moving to scrap the scheme but we will be seeking to fix it. We are going to look at every single way to reduce costs and to make it work."

Kenny said thats bad news on all fronts: “There’ll be more laws, more regulation, more meddling, more cost and it’s not going to make it any easier on you at all.”

It also begs the question: would the government have been better off putting the money into solving the state's escalating recycling crisis?