Introduction: Recently, Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) officially announced that it will implement a consumer deposit system (DRS) for beverage packaging in 2022 as an important step in promoting the extended producer responsibility (EPR) system for packaging waste. components, thereby accelerating the transition to zero waste and a circular economy.
For some time now, countries around the world have had a high demand for increasing the recycling rate of PET bottles due to the need to combat garbage and marine plastics and save scarce resources. Therefore, I believe that everyone in the recycled PET industry is familiar with the idea of a deposit system for recycled PET recycling.
1. What is the beverage packaging deposit system?
The beverage packaging deposit system works by adding a small deposit to the retail price of the beverage, and the deposit is refunded when the consumer returns the empty beverage bottle for recycling. Such systems, also known as deposit return systems (DRS) or bottle bills, are usually established through national or local government legislation.
2. The beverage packaging deposit system has attracted increasing attention.
As the United Nations Environment Program encouraged all countries to join the beverage packaging deposit system in December 2017, many countries around the world have become increasingly vocal about it. At present, more than 40 countries and regions in the world have implemented environmental deposit systems, and the categories include beverage bottles, lead-acid batteries, automobiles, etc. Most of the deposit-based recycling systems established abroad start with beverage packaging as a breakthrough. On the one hand, the quantity of beverage packaging is relatively large. On the other hand, beverage packaging has the characteristics of standard shape and completeness, which is more suitable for the implementation of the deposit system. More and more countries and regions are solving the problem of beverage packaging recycling system by implementing deposit system.
In May 2018, the European Union required all member states to actively carry out actions such as the deposit return system to achieve a 90% recycling rate of disposable plastic drink packaging by 2025. In March 2018, the British government announced that it would discuss the introduction of a deposit system for beverage packaging, and the leader of the Scottish ruling party had announced the matter in September 2017. The Indian state of Gujarat required the use of smart recycling machines in June 2018, and Denmark announced that from 2020 it would expand the existing deposit system to all types of glass, plastic or metal packaged juices and concentrated products. Hong Kong and Macao have also initially established a deposit system for waste plastics.
3. Advantages of the waste plastic deposit system – increasing the recycling rate of PET bottles.
At present, domestic recycled PET packaging stations are basically small workshops located at the junction of urban and rural areas, serving as distribution centers and processing points for waste products such as beverage PET packaging. At present, it seems that most of the discarded plastic beverage bottles are resold through informal recycling channels and concentrated in family workshops. However, without the corresponding qualifications to control environmental pollution emissions, it is easy to cause environmental pollution to a certain extent.
Most recycled PET beverage bottles are used for direct production, imitating Dahua’s mid-to-low-end recycled polyester staple fibers, etc., which reduces their utilization value to some extent and causes a waste of resources.
The implementation of the deposit system can enable beverage bottles to be classified at their source and not mixed with garbage. This can greatly reduce water consumption and pollution in the next step of cleaning and processing. If the source of raw materials is well controlled, the recycled plastic beverage bottles can be made into environmentally friendly polyester chips, or cleaner food-grade polyester chips, and then made into beverage bottles again, achieving “bottle-to-bottle” recycling, thereby saving money. Precious resources such as oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
4. The development of my country’s domestic waste plastic deposit system.
At present, Beijing Yingchuang and TOMRA are cooperating with each other to test and promote the scrap plastic deposit system business in China. Yingchuang Recycling has deployed 5,000 smart recycling machines in urban areas of Beijing, safely recycling nearly 55 million beverage bottles. However, the editor learned from communication with a manager from Beijing Yingchuang that although the waste plastic deposit system is still a major trend in the development of the recycled PET industry, there are too many factors that need to be integrated, from recyclers to brands, which is equivalent to The unified signing and integration of the bottle source market and the integration of unified price management will impact the traditional recycling methods of bottle sources to a certain extent and will hit some packaging stations that do not meet the standards. In addition, true implementation requires not only support from national policies but also to the national legislative level.
Therefore, whether the deposit system for waste plastic bottle recycling can really come to fruition in China still requires the efforts of all parties, and it is worth looking forward to.
<br
