To start, the PRS will cover plastic beverage bottles and liquid cartons. To avoid the risk of migration to unrestricted packaging types such as pouches, we call for expanding the legislation in the future to cover all types of packaging materials.
Hong Kong has a highly efficient and effective recycling networks of more than 400,000 cleaners including domestic helpers, building and street cleaners, as well as operators of recycling shops and trucks. They already recover a high proportion of used paper and metal. Key is to design the PRS with incentives for cleaners to also recover plastics. The Drink Without Waste campaign has proven success with pilot schemes collecting plastic bottles from cleaners in return for cash paid to their Octopus cards.
We propose to start with refunding HK$ 0.10 / bottle to cleaners participating in bulk collection, and to consumers who return bottles to GREEN Stores or RVMs. While high value refunds are appealing, a large gap between refund and the value of used plastic will invite fraud. To defend against this limit recovery to RVM networks and exclude bulk collection via cleaners. In turn, this removes the opportunity of collecting and recovering plastics via the expansive cleaner network. Moreover, consumers risks absorbing the higher costs of RVMs networks, they will need to walk further to get back their refunds back.
DWW proposes a “Packaging Exchange” to act as a not-for-profit operator with a diversified board composed of different stakeholders including Government representatives. They oversee the operation together with an advisory council such as the Advisory Council on the Environment to monitor the outcomes. Staffing the single operator with independent, experienced professionals under the direction of a Non-Executive Board composed of Government, beverage value chain and civil society stakeholders aligns the Scheme tightly with the overall policy objectives. It also fosters a focus on performance, and helps secure beverage value chain buy-in. Other benefits are that it keeps system costs low, and minimizes impact on consumer choice, convenience and cost.
Drink Without Waste will continue to roll out voluntary schemes to recover and recycle used beverage packaging to show our commitment. These voluntary programmes allow government and stakeholders to capture valuable experiences and insights by tracking the performance. The outcomes will shape how the PRS is formed.
