This month, the New Zealand public has a major opportunity to transition back to reuse.

The Government is proposing a Container Return Scheme to ‘transform recycling’. The proposal is you will get 20 cents back for returning your empty bottles. But the current proposal is that those bottles will then get recycled, not reused, and while this is a step in the right direction, it does not include the energy-intensive process and the C02 emissions created by creating a new bottle.

Recycling is carbon-intensive and inefficient. Reusing will save carbon emissions, water, energy, and waste. If we are already collecting the bottles, why not reuse them?

We are proposing that the Government implements a centralised reuse scheme to wash, sanitise, de-label and return bottles to producers that can be part of the proposed Container Return Scheme which currently only provides for recycling.