Plastic pollution of the oceans and other waterways has become an urgent problem that threatens wildlife, as illustrated by the discovery of a sperm whale that had 29 kilos of plastic in its stomach. Recycling plastic has become all the rage across the developed world. However, most of those programs that involve curb pickup are voluntary and do not have any other incentive besides public spiritedness.
The United Kingdom is seeking to change all of that be instituting a system of deposit return for plastic drink bottles. The idea is that people who buy soft drinks or other beverages that come in plastic bottles will pay a little more for the privilege. However, in return, people will get a few pence back when they return those bottles, either to the business from which they bought the drinks or to a “reverse vending machine” that would spit out money for plastic bottles.
The returned plastic bottles would be sent to recycling centers where they can be turned into useful products and will thus be diverted from the world’s waterways. Plastic bottles make up a third of the trash that winds up in the ocean, creating in one case a floating island of microplastic in the Pacific that is the size of a small country.
Similar return deposit schemes have already been instituted in Germany, Sweden, Finland, and some parts of the United States. The system in Germany has already resulted in a 97 percent recycling rate for plastic bottles, an astonishing figure, all things considered.
One of the tricks for making a recycling system work, however, is to develop enough markets to handle the flow of plastic material that is being diverted from conventional waste disposal. No recycling system can work if a glut of material results, forcing the burning or burying of the trash plastic.
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