Can the Deposit Model Solve the Problem of Difficult Recycling of Beverage Packaging?
According to Euromonitor's Global Packaging Trends Report, more than 480 billion plastic beverage bottles were sold worldwide in 2016, compared with 300 billion a decade ago and will grow to 583.3 billion by 2021. With so many plastic bottles being produced and used, where did the final flow go after completing the mission?
Because plastics take hundreds of years to degrade, the discarded plastic bottles are still in nature and eventually become plastic waste that collects in oceans, rivers, and lakes. How to solve the pain point of beverage packaging recycling is still a topic that the industry must face.
In recent years, some recycling companies have begun to enter stations, shopping malls, and communities. By setting up smart recycling machines, they are trying to get more beverage bottles back on the right track. After safe recycling, they will re-generate beverage bottles through professional processing factories to directly reduce the consumption of petroleum resources. Or as a fiber. However, the reporter's investigation found that this intelligent and specialized beverage bottle recycling method did not achieve the desired results.
The “deposit mode” is a good attempt. The safe recovery rate of beverage bottles during the pilot period is over 70%.
The deposit system is jointly established by the retailer and the beverage industry to manage operations in a non-profit model.
The process of the deposit system begins with the beverage distributor, and the beverage product is sold to the retail store. In addition to paying the beverage product price to the beverage manufacturer, the retail store also pays the full deposit of the beverage bottle.
The beverage manufacturer cannot retain the deposit but instead transfers the deposit to the deposit system operator, which is a non-profit, independent third party usually consisting of the retail industry and related practitioners. Unified management of the system.
For example, consumers come to buy drinks, and the price of the beverage also includes a refundable deposit of 1 yuan. Of course, the consumer knows that he has paid the deposit for the beverage bottle because there is a clear deposit mark on the beverage package. As a responsible environmental citizen, consumers should return empty bottles to the store or any other recycling store after drinking the beverage. The 1 yuan deposit will be refunded to the consumer in full. The system operator will arrange to collect and return the empty bottles returned from the retailer for inventory, sorting, and compression, and sell them as recyclable materials to the professional recycling factory for processing.
At this time, the first deposit paid by the retail store to the beverage manufacturer and transferred from the beverage manufacturer to the operating system dealer will be returned to the retailer after the operator has collected the empty bottle. In addition to the refunded $1 deposit, the system operator will also pay the retailer some fees as a reward for the retailer's convenience and quick recovery point for consumers. The recovered empty bottles are collected and transported to the system operator's sorting center for inventory and are sorted and compressed according to different colors and quality. After being packaged, it is sold to a professional recycling factory for recycling. After the bottle label and cap are recycled and separated, the empty bottle is crushed and cleaned to produce recycled materials that meet safety and environmental standards. After the regeneration and the original materials are mixed, a new preform can be produced. The new preform is heated and formed into a new beverage bottle in the beverage factory, and the can is loaded and sold so that the recycling process of the beverage bottle is completed.
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