The 2018 Australian Craft Beer Survey, has thrown out some surprising results, one of which showed that drinkers in the category are not engaged with the New South Wales Container Deposit Scheme (CDS).
The survey, conducted by craft beer retailer, Beer Cartel, details the opinions of more than 18,000 craft beer drinkers and last week TheShout reported that the survey had seen Balter named as Australia’s best brewery and the independence was important to craft beer drinkers.
The survey also found that few craft beer drinkers use the CDS, the controversial scheme that was introduced by the NSW Government at the end of 2017. The survey reported that just 14 per cent of respondents said that they regularly take their used bottles and cans to a CDS collection point, with the majority, 68 per cent preferring to use kerbside recycling.
Michael Waters, the Executive Director of the Liquor Stores Association of NSW and ACT, said the result did not surprise him and reflect the poor planning that went into the Government’s introduction of the scheme.
“Considering that NSW is the only jurisdiction globally to introduce a CDS after implementing effective kerbside recycling, this result does not surprise me at all,” Waters told TheShout.
“With Local Councils now arguably benefiting financially from redirecting beverages containers collected at kerbside, residents are right to expect a proportionate reduction in their rates.
“Keep Australia Beautiful research consistently confirms that beverage containers are not the major contributor to the waste stream that many people assume. Cigarette butts, paper, plastic and takeaway food containers contributed more to the overall litter item count than beverage containers.
“The challenge is that beverage containers take up a large amount of the litter volume (in NSW representing 44 per cent of litter by volume). The NSW Government claim that the CDS aims to capture 43 per cent of this number (18.9 per cent), meaning people are now forking out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to deal with less than 19 per cent of the litter problem in NSW (by volume), but just nine per cent of total littered items.
“The mark of a successful CDS is one which complements, not conflicts with the already successful kerbside recycling system.”
According to the Return and Earn website the scheme has so far seen over 700 million containers returned, while there are now 680 collection points across the state, which is still well short of the 800 collection points the Government promised would be in place when the scheme launched.