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- Aug 8

Which Countries Have Plastic Bottle Deposit Systems?

This article is published in collaboration with Statista

by Katharina Buchholz

Despite their ability to increase recycling rates and reduce litter, relatively few countries in the world currently have container deposit systems that include plastic bottles. As of mid-2024, approximately 30 countries around the globe had such schemes including Ecuador, most of Australia, much of Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Croatia and all of Scandinavia. More introductions are pending in Europe as European Union laws stipulate that countries must grow their recycling collection rates.

Like with many EU laws, the rules experienced pushback and this time it was France which lobbied against the initial proposal of mandatory plastic bottle and drink can deposits and for exceptions for countries which could show that they already collected at least 78 percent of these containers separately by 2029. The country reportedly feels confident it can achieve the threshold, but a recent example from Spain shows a fallacy of this logic as it was recently discovered that a Spanish packaging waste managing company in the beverage industry had falsified collection rates - up from 36 percent to a whopping 71 percent. Still, several EU countries have announced plans or are getting ready to introduce new container deposit schemes that include plastic bottles, for example Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic, Greece, Austria and Portugal.

The United Kingdom is also introducing deposit collection of plastic bottles and metal drink cans in England and Northern Ireland, while Wales and Scotland are saying they will also collect glass containers. European countries which have had deposit systems in place for some time normally collect all three, typically having started with glass and having added plastic and metal later on. Newer systems, especially in the developing world, are more often PET only or exempt glass. However, many countries around the globe already have return and refill glass bottle schemes of varying degrees of prevalence that function with and without deposits and might run parallel to newer schemes.

In the United States, plastic bottle deposits have been introduced in 10 states - California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Vermont (as well as Guam). In Canada, only Nunavut has passed no significant regulation in the area, while Ontario and Manitoba in addition to beer/alcohol container deposits collect money from producers for most other recepticals and have ramped up efforts to collect them back without a deposit using these funds. The programs have been successful in collecting 60-70 percent of containers back this way.

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