Analysis: lessons from more than 100 years of return culture in Denmark shows us why giving waste a value could work for Ireland
It's a Wednesday morning in August and the opening of a new bottle deposit station is causing long queues in a neighbourhood outside the city of Aarhus in Denmark. Locals have been storing their bottles and cans for months, waiting for this exact moment since the station closed down for refurbishment. Soon, queues outside deposit stations or reverse vending machines (RVM) could become commonplace in Ireland, too.
A new deposit return scheme (DRS) is set to be introduced here in February 2024. When you buy a drink in a PET plastic bottle or in an aluminium or steel can featuring the return sign, you will be charged a small deposit fee in addition to the price of the drink: a deposit of 15c for containers from 150ml to 500ml and a deposit of 25c for containers over 500mls up to 3 litres. The deposit can then be redeemed by returning your container to any retail outlet, either in an RVM or over the counter. The idea is that the deposit will act as an incentive for people to recycle more and the system will build a circular economy. A similar system is due to be introduced across Northern Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland in 2025.
Danes have been steadfastly returning their drinks packaging for decades now, earning them a world record in 2021 and they have one of the highest return rates for plastic bottles in Europe at 96%. So how does the system work and what can we learn from the pioneering scheme?
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From RTÉ News, details of Ireland's Deposit Return Scheme
The high return rate is down to a long history of the "returkultur" — return culture, says Hanne Svenningsen, head of Environment and Climate with Dansk Retursystem, the non-profit that operates the Danish system. Danes are all brought up in the culture of returning their drinks containers, and while "the deposit amount is important to the consumer, what is more important, our analysis shows, is the good feeling regarding this returning, for the benefit of climate and environment."
Danes became acquainted with the idea of ‘flaskepant’ — a bottle deposit — back in the late 1800s when some dairies introduced it on their glass milk bottles. By 1922, the first ‘pantsystem’ — deposit system — was introduced by breweries for beer bottles. The system expanded throughout the decades to include both beer and soft drinks.
Plastic bottles arrived in the early 1990s and Dansk Retursystem was established in 2000 ahead of the arrival of aluminium cans on the Danish market, to comply with EU regulations. The system has since grown to include alcoholic soft drinks, energy drinks, mineral waters, juices and other ready-to-drink products. Dansk Retursystem is owned alongside a number of Danish breweries.
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From Dansk Retursystem, the bottle's journey
There are around 1,500 drinks producers and importers with around 50,000 different products on Danish shelves that are registered, as well as around 14,500 deposit or collection points, including shops, offices, restaurants etc, Svenningsen outlines. Producers are obliged to register their drinks products with the non-profit by law — that’s how the Irish system will work too — and in theory, a producer could market a drink in mixed material packaging, but it would cost them a higher fee to do so because it makes it harder to recycle.
When the customer buys a bottle or can, they pay a deposit fee, which gets returned to them at one of the RVMs or at a deposit station. The material then gets collected, sorted and sent for recycling by Dansk Retursystem, before it returns to shelves, mostly as new bottles and cans. Shops are obliged to take back the packaging, so they receive compensation from Dansk Retursystem, depending on the volume that they receive, stock, clean and so on.
Dansk Retursystem has three types of income: income from the sale of material for recycling, income from the fee paid by the producers of products in bottles and cans — when they register to market a product in a bottle or can they must pay a fee to Dansk Retursystem — and then the non-redeemed deposit i.e. the bottles and cans that aren’t ultimately returned by the consumer to claim the deposit fee. Income from non-redeemed deposit is getting lower and lower, which is a positive because it means more people are returning their bottles and cans for recycling.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Tony Keohane from Ireland's Deposit Return Scheme explains how the project will work
To add to that, the average fee paid for packaging by producers has also been reduced by 83% since 2017, Svenningsen says. This is a positive because the fee depends on how easily recyclable the bottle or can is. In 2023, the fee for packing that is easy to recycle will be zero, while coloured plastic bottles, bottles with sleeves on, composite packaging and so on, has a higher fee. This is to encourage producers to design well from an environmental point of view.
"We are non-profit, so each packaging type has its own fee and the fee is calculated based on the cost of running the system, picking up the packaging, paying out support for the shops and stores, minus the income from sale for recycling. And these fees are actually approved by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency up front."
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On average 93% of all bottles and cans with a deposit mark were returned by consumers. Mapping by Dansk Retursystem shows that the remaining 7% that doesn't get returned primarily ends up in the mixed waste bin.
The system also achieves a high degree of closed-loop circularity: 93% of bottles and cans are recycled into new bottles and cans. "It’s the best way to maintain the high quality of the packaging material. We could, for instance, recycle aluminium cans into bikes or cars, or plastic bottles into shirts or pencils, but then you lose the food-grade quality. So it’s very important to us that all the packaging is running in its own circle, so to speak," Svenningsen says.
Dansk Retursystem collected around 70,000 tons of material for recycling in 2021 and eliminated 210,000 tonnes of CO2.
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From RTÉ Archives, Aoife Kavanagh reports for RTÉ News in 1999 on cartons replacing milk bottles
Ireland has a plastic problem. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said that recycling rates for plastic packaging remain "worryingly low" and we face "significant challenges" in meeting our targets. In 2020, we only recycled 29% of plastic packaging overall. The EU’s Directive on singe-use plastic means wet’ve got to recycle 77% of plastic bottles by 2025 and 90% by 2029. Introducing a DRS is a part of how we’re going to get there.
According to Re-turn, the non-profit set up to run the Irish deposit system, 60% of plastic bottles and cans are currently being collected for recycling through green bins, which means that over 30% are not collected and end up as litter or in the wrong bin.
Ireland has a recycling rate of over 80% for glass and is surpassing recycling targets for this material and that's why there are no plans to include glass in the Irish scheme, says Re-turn. CEO of Dansk Retursystem Lars Krejberg Pedersen previously said that nobody in Denmark would "dream of taking glass out of the scheme" because of the "huge environmental uplift" that comes from including it. Svenningsen adds that a previous study concluded "quite clearly" that including plastic, metal and glass in the deposit system has the best environmental performance.
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From RTÉ Archives, Colm Connolly reports for RTÉ News on Ireland's first first bottle bank in Blanchardstown in Dublin in 1978
"A benefit that's going to come out of this scheme is that people are not going to have a party and leave a lot of cans and bottles on the ground because they're going to be worth money," Minister of State with responsibility for Communications and Circular Economy, Ossian Smyth told RTE Radio 1's Morning Ireland when launching the scheme in November 2022. He said he is "sure that there is going to be far less litter as a result".
We have to do in in a handful of years what has taken other European countries like Denmark, Germany, Finland, Sweden and Norway decades to perfect. We don't have over 100 years of experience to fall back on in Ireland when it comes to deposit return schemes, which highlights why the rollout of this scheme, and the communication and campaigns that accompany it, will be key in reaching our targets, and one step further, key in people understanding that it might be about targets in the short term, but it’s about precious resources in the long term.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
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