Plastic bottles: the list of countries where you'll be paid for returning them grows.

Norway, Germany, and France reward those who return plastic bottles to the store. They pay from 12 to 31 cents per container. The result: 90 percent of plastic is disposed of properly and recycled.

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deposit refund system

DEPOSIT REFUND SYSTEM PLASTIC

The simplest and most effective way to reduce plastic consumption and prevent this type of waste from ending up on beaches or in some public park? Pay for the return of bottles, as once happened with glass. Rewarding, with a sort of generous reimbursement, who returns the package to where it was purchased.

The mechanism is very simple, and is already applied in many European countries, those where the percentage of recycled plastic is the highest. In Anglo-Saxon terms it is called Drs, acronym of Deposit-refund system. The cost of the bottle of plastic is already included in the price of the product and is not an extra that the consumer has to pay, as in the case of biodegradable plastic bags in Italy. But where do they begin? the advantagesWhen the customer returns the plastic bottles to the same store where he bought the mineral water or Coca-Cola, he receives cash. 0,12 cents for the small bottle and 0,31 cents for one-liter bottles and up.

ALSO READ: Plastic in the water, too, a terrible discovery. There's only one solution: reduce its use. And it's not difficult.

REFUND IN EXCHANGE OF PLASTIC

The DRS, with different acronyms and abbreviations, is used in Norway, Germany and France and its format is spreading everywhere. As a result, in Norway, for example, the collection of separate plastic waste exceeds the threshold of 90 percent, with enormous benefits for the entire circular economy supply chain.

This mechanism is a classic paradigm of what we have been arguing for a long time on Don't Waste: we must boost, with different tools (in China in the subway stations you put the empty water bottles and collect the subway ticket), reducing the use of plastic e il recycling of what is purchased through packaging. We need to leverage interest and convenience to create new habits and lifestyles. And we can't get by with strident appeals for a more sustainable world or, worse, with taxation that instead alienates consumers from good practices and, if anything, makes them fall in love with plastic.

LESS PLASTIC: HOW TO DO IT, IN EVERYONE'S INTEREST

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