The plastic bottle scheme that could help clean up the UK

As the scale of plastic pollution in the world's oceans becomes ever more apparent, could bottle deposit schemes help turn the tide?

Norway's decades-old initiative is said to be the best in the world at tackling plastic litter.

The country recycled nearly 600 million plastic bottles in 2016 - a 97% collection rate.

A British ministerial delegation has just returned from Norway to see if the UK should copy the scheme.

Only around half of all plastic bottles currently get recycled in the UK.

Consumers in Norway pay a deposit on every plastic bottle - the equivalent of 10p to 25p depending on size.

How it works

They return it empty to the shop and post it into a machine which reads the barcode and produces a coupon giving the deposit back.

If a costumer has left liquid in the bottle, the machine eats it anyway - but instead gives the deposit to the business, as they are now responsible for emptying it.

The soft drinks producers that join the scheme pay less taxes.

Drinks bottles are one the most common types of plastic waste. Some 480 billion plastic bottles were sold globally in 2016 - that's a million bottles per minute.

Other countries running schemes to reduce consumption and increase recycling are in operation in other Nordic nations, Germany, and some states in the US and Canada.

The managers of the Norway operation say it could easily be applied to the UK.

‘Lazy people'

In Norway, the deposit-return machine accepts only two types of plastic bottle, with approved labels and even approved glue to fix the labels.

This allows the labels to be stripped easily, and simplifies recycling.

Terje Skovly works at a municipal recycling scheme, ROAF, which collects the bins from 70,000 homes on the outskirts of Oslo.

At his plant - a 3-D maze of conveyors and ramps - a steady stream of plastic bottles is isolated from other waste by infrared recognition.

These bottles have been mixed with other waste during collection so they can't be used again for food grade packaging. They get down-graded into plastic furniture instead.

This is a common problem in the UK, where roadside collections of plastic bottles are often contaminated with ‘rogue’ rubbish.

"Why are people so lazy that they can't be bothered to recycle a bottle? We should increase the deposit to 50p on a large bottle,” he says. The value in lost deposits is just under a million pounds - every year, Mr Skovly estimates.

With that amount of cash swilling around the scheme in spare change, it's little wonder that representatives of other nations are considering the advantages of going Norwegian.

However, politicians in Westminster have been cautious amid lobbying by drinks manufacturers and fears from small shops about the administrative burden.

Economic Incentive

US scientists have calculated the total amount of plastic ever made to be 8.3 billion tonnes.

This astonishing mass was created only in the last 65 years or so.

More than 70% of it is now in waste streams, sent largely to landfill - although too much of it just litters the wider environment, including the oceans.

Even Norway's ultra-efficient recycling system can't compete with virgin plastic on cost.

The problem, the recyclers say, is that the ingredients of plastic - oil and gas - are simply too cheap.

The cost of each bottle is subsidised by a few pence by the manufacturer. This ultimately gets passed to the consumer.

The operators of Norway’s scheme argue that it's more appropriate for people buying drinks to pay for them to be recycled, rather than have taxpayers foot the bill for cleaning up litter on beaches.

Last year, the UK’s Marine Conservation Society found 718 pieces of litter for every 100m stretch of beach surveyed during their recent Great British Beach Clean Up.

That was a 10% increase on last year.

Rubbish from food and drink constituted at least 20% of all litter collected.

Samantha Harding, from the countryside group CPRE, has been campaigning against plastic litter for more than a decade.

"The key is to get an economic incentive - put a deposit on the bottle and most people won't throw money away.”

Ms Harding said one great advantage of deposit return schemes is that it obliges each part of the plastic chain to change their behaviour - from product concept to design; to manufacture; transport; use; and finally disposal.

"This is great because we've seen big firms campaigning against good schemes because it forced them to take more responsibility. We're in a crisis now - there's no room for that sort of thing.”