The UK deposit system will officially begin on October 1, 2025- Jiaxing Fuda Chemical Fiber Factory

The UK government recently launched plans to implement a deposit system in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, starting on 2025 October 10. Following the completion of the consultation on the regulation by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), its deposit system will be implemented at the end of 1, with the official start of the deposit system on October 2023, 2025.

DEFRA confirmed that the deposit system in England and Northern Ireland will cover PET, steel and aluminium beverage containers, but not glass bottles, as its government believes will add complexity and challenges, particularly in the retail and hospitality industries. And the Welsh mechanism will include glass bottles. The containers covered by the three regions are all 50 ml to 3 liters of solvent.

Another step is that the government will appoint a deposit management organization with a deadline of summer 2024. The collection rate target for the first three-year reporting period was 90 per cent, followed by annual reporting.

On August 8 this year, Scotland will first implement the deposit system as a member of the United Kingdom, but the industry believes that the time for SMEs to prepare is too long, and a court hearing will be held on March 16. Scotland's deposit system is 3p, covered with PET, steel and aluminium, but also glass.

At present, more than 40 countries around the world have implemented the deposit system, including Germany, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Croatia, Lithuania and other countries, as well as parts of the United States, Canada, Australia, Italy, Spain, etc., the overall effect is remarkable, the average recovery rate is 85%, and the public support rate is 79.68%.

In the United States, the "environmental deposit system" is regarded as the most successful garbage collection system. On the one hand, the ultra-high recycling rate is guaranteed, and on the other hand, it does not generate any financial burden for the population.

In 1971, Oregon first enacted a "green deposit system" (known as Bottle Bill in the United States). By 2002, eleven states had adopted an "environmental deposit system" with a recycling rate of 75 to 95 percent. The recovery rate in states that did not implement it was only 22 percent, a significant gap.

Germany has been the first country in Europe to implement a deposit system for the recycling of plastic bottles and cans since 2003: many bottles have a €0.25 logo on their labels, which means that when consumers finish their drinks and return to the mall or recycling point with empty bottles, they can return a deposit of €0.25. The data shows that Germany's recycling rate of cans has reached 96% and the recycling rate of beverage bottles has reached 98.5%, which is directly related to the German law that disposable beverage packaging must implement a "deposit system".

In Sweden, the "environmental deposit system" has a history of more than 35 years. In 2017, Sweden's recycling rate for PET water bottles and aluminum cans was as high as 84% and 81%, which fell short of the target of 90%, but it is a striking comparison: only 44% of packaging plastic was recycled by the Swedish Kerbside Collection system in the same year.

In 2006, the state of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, began to implement the deposit system, and the recycled products that entered the deposit system in six months accounted for 70% of all recyclables, and the annual recycling volume of a single PET category exceeded 1,2 tons.

Anthesis, a British consulting company, pointed out through research that the implementation of the deposit system for recycling garbage needs to meet five criteria: large amount, small variety of materials, no pollution, easy to distinguish, and can be effectively recycled. In addition, the range of recycling types varies from country to country depending on the respective facilities and environment.

The second challenge to face in the "environmental deposit system" is how to operate. This is a large system, with many and complex links, and high maintenance costs. The vast majority of countries with deposit systems have gone through a process of balancing the rights of producers, retailers, and consumers, including long-term infrastructure development, improvement of laws and regulations, and cultivation of public awareness.

Influenced by the concept of deposit system in Europe and the United States, since December 2012, a Chinese company "Yingchuang Recycling" has also piloted the "environmental protection deposit system", located in the Lenovo Bridge flagship store of Beijing Wumart Supermarket. Supermarket drinks are labelled with a virtual deposit system. After consumers consume and drink, they can put the empty bottle into the automatic recycling machine of the "Intelligent Convenience Safe Recycling Demonstration Station" to get a deposit of 12.0 yuan per bottle. This recycling price is higher than the recycling price of ordinary beverage bottles.

During the pilot period, the recycling machine returned the deposit more than 30,70 times, and the recovery rate of deposit bottles was as high as <>%. However, in general, China's garbage recycling industry is still in the early stages of construction, and there is still a lot of effort to implement the "environmental deposit system" on a large scale.