The New South Wales Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) has now been in place for over a week and despite many issues, the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has said there has been a great community up take so far.
The CDS kicked off on 1 December, despite there being far fewer than the 800 collection points that the government promised. The rollout was labelled ‘abysmal’ by the NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro.
However, despite the industry criticism, the EPA has indicated that the public engagement with the scheme has, so far, been positive.
This morning and EPA spokesperson told TheShout: “There has been great community uptake of the scheme. So far 3.3 million drink containers have been returned.”
Last week the NSW Environment Minister, Gabrielle Upton was also positive about the public uptake of the CDS.
“This is a great start to the scheme – people’s participation in the scheme is exceeding expectations,” the Minister said.
“The number of returned containers will soar when the over-the-counter returns are added to the count.
“This is just the start – the rollout of collection points will keep going and the number of returns will keep rising.”
Despite the positiveity from the Minister, industry has been highly critical of the scheme, which has been described as “botched”, “rushed” and “poorly crafted”.
Last week, the President of Cider Australia, Sam Reid, told TheShout that the scheme was “possibly the worst thought out and implemented piece of legislation since the Rudd Government implemented the mining tax”.
The Government has also come under-fire for the lack of information to the public about the scheme, with the fact that the costs for running the scheme are being passed onto consumers, being kept particularly quiet.