THE results from Wales’ first kerbside Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) pilot have shown consumers to be ‘highly engaged’, with 97% of registered households returning at least one bottle over four weeks.
The pilot project ran in Conwy, North Wales, over the summer. Negating the need to return containers in person, the kerbside pilot saw households receive six uniquely tagged Princes Gate mineral water bottles over a four-week period.
During the joint initiative between technology supplier Polytag, the Welsh Government, Conwy Council, Ecosurety and Wrap Cymru, residents in Colwyn Heights were asked to scan the bottles when placing them in their usual kerbside recycling containers, using a free app. The bottles were scanned again upon collection by the local council’s household waste recycling team.
For each bottle scanned, householders received a digital token worth 20p. Over four weeks, 90% of registered households scanned four or more bottles, with 73% scanning all six.
With lower deployment costs and consumers more familiar with scanning QR codes during the pandemic, kerbside DRSs have been tipped as an effective way of reducing litter.
The Conwy pilot utilised start-up Polytag’s digital DRS ‘tag and trace’ technology. The recycling platform enables brands to describe the packaging, then ‘tag’ it at the point of manufacture, then, with the help of consumers, ‘trace’ it, so it can be isolated from the existing recycling waste stream and reprocessed to retain high value plastics and minimise downcycling. All consumers have to do is scan a QR-type code on the packs.
Alice Rackley, CEO of Polytag, said, “Across the UK, consumers go through an estimated 14 billion plastic drinks bottles, 9 billion drinks cans and 5 billion glass bottles a year, according to Defra. A huge amount of that packaging waste is not recycled because it is not disposed of properly. We created Polytag to provide a simple way to help change consumer behaviour and encourage higher levels of recycling for drinks containers.
“As we move closer to implementing a nationwide DRS, it is vital that brands, retailers, government and technology suppliers work together to find the most convenient way for consumers to recycle containers. We firmly believe that kerbside-based collections are the most effective way to achieve real change whilst delivering significant benefits to brands. This has now been proven in two trials, the latest in Conwy, where engagement was 97%, and in Greasby on the Wirral where we saw 91% of tagged packaging successfully recycled.”
