Finland operates a highly effective deposit return system for glass and plastic bottles, initiated in the 1950s and expanded to include plastics over the past two decades.

Managed by the private sector, the system features around 5,000 return machines, with deposit values ranging from 15 to 40 cents.

This accessibility and financial incentive have resulted in recycling rates of 94% for aluminum cans and 92% for plastic bottles in 2020, far surpassing many other countries.

The government’s role is evident in enabling the private sector to manage the system and fostering public acceptance through policy support .

Norway’s deposit return scheme achieves a 97% recycling rate, bolstered by an environmental tax on bottle producers.

Producers must recycle over 95% of their containers to avoid the tax, which encourages the use of uniform, easily recyclable materials and improves the quality of recycled products.

The government’s combination of financial incentives and regulatory measures is central to this success .

Germany is recognized as a global leader, with households sorting waste into up to six bins, supported by robust government policies such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which mandates that manufacturers manage the lifecycle of their products, including disposal and recycling.

This has led to high recycling rates, reduced landfill use, and strong public participation, further reinforced by awareness campaigns .

Sweden’s waste-to-energy programs, where over 99% of household waste is recycled or converted to energy, are driven by effective sorting systems and government-led public awareness initiatives [general summary].

Japan’s meticulous waste sorting, guided by detailed municipal instructions and government-supported education, results in high recycling rates and strong community compliance [general summary].

South Korea’s volume-based waste fee system charges residents according to the waste they generate, incentivizing recycling and reduction.

Finland operates a highly effective deposit return system for glass and plastic bottles, initiated in the 1950s and expanded to include plastics over the past two decades.

Managed by the private sector, the system features around 5,000 return machines, with deposit values ranging from 15 to 40 cents.

This accessibility and financial incentive have resulted in recycling rates of 94% for aluminum cans and 92% for plastic bottles in 2020, far surpassing many other countries.

The government’s role is evident in enabling the private sector to manage the system and fostering public acceptance through policy support .

Title:

Content: Menu Close

Scottish bottle deposit scheme to be blocked – but evidence from Europe suggests it’s the way forward

Unrecycled drink containers are a huge problem in the UK. A survey by Planet Patrol, a non-profit organisation, found that the drinks industry was responsible for more than a third of the litter found in the UK in 2020 and 2021. The items included plastic and glass bottles, metal drinks cans, single-use cups and lids.

This is a concern. Litter takes years to degrade, causing harm to wildlife and habitats, and cleaning it up is expensive. Street cleaning costs UK taxpayers an estimated £1 billion each year.

The Scottish government has proposed a deposit return scheme. People will pay a 20p deposit when they buy a drink in a single-use container, which they get back when the empty bottle or can is returned. Scottish drinks containers would also need to be specially labelled and tracked.

But the scheme is under threat. The UK government is unlikely to agree to the trade exemption needed to enable trade rules in Scotland to differ from the rest of the UK. And critics argue that a deposit return scheme will be difficult for smaller retailers in an already competitive sector due to the costs of handling returns and registering with the scheme.

However, similar schemes in other European countries have prevented huge volumes of litter from entering the environment. These deposit return schemes offer insight into how effective a measure they can be and provide a possible route for implementation in the UK.

Evidence from Europe

In Finland, a deposit return system for glass bottles was introduced in the 1950s and continues today, having included plastic drinks containers for the past 20 years. The scheme is operated entirely by the private sector, with 5,000 plastic container-return machines located across the country in shops, hotels, restaurants, offices and schools.

Each time a person buys a drink in a bottle or a can, they pay a 15 to 40 cent deposit, depending on the material the container is made out of. The containers are then recycled or the materials are reused on their return.

Almost every bottle and can in Finland is recycled as a result of the scheme. In 2020, Finnish residents recycled 94% of aluminium cans (out of 1.4 billion sold) and 92% of plastic bottles (out of 530 million). By contrast, just 82% and 57% were recycled in the UK respectively.

Norway has achieved an even more impressive recycling rate of 97%. Norway’s deposit return approach is instead supplemented with an environmental tax imposed on bottle producers. The tax is NOK 6.46 (£0.50) per unit of metal and glass and NOK 3.91 (£0.30) for plastic items. To avoid the tax, producers must recycle more than 95% of the containers they produce.

Plastic bottles usually end up being “downcycled” into other items, like fleece materials. But the tax has encouraged producers of plastic bottles in Norway to make bottles easier to recycle by using more uniform and less contaminated materials. Efforts have included using approved bottle tops and glue and labels that are easier to remove. The quality of recycled plastic in Norway is now so high that recycled bottles can be made into new bottles.

Plastic recycling schemes in Europe have also delivered social benefits. The Finnish system allows people to choose to collect their deposit or donate it to charity. In Berlin, those not inclined to return their bottles to the store can leave them under bins for others to collect and claim the reward.

Public acceptance

The success of a deposit return scheme largely depends on what happens to the item once it is returned. Success is not based on economic viability alone. Any deposit return scheme needs to be acceptable to the people who run and use it.

Cost-benefit analysis of two separate deposit return schemes (recycling and reuse) for plastic food trays in Sweden found that the costs are greater than the benefits for recycling, but not for reuse. If you consider the costs involved in packaging, washing and the recycling process, then a return scheme may work best if the item is reused.

In Scotland, concerns about how the scheme will run and its real benefit are chipping away at the confidence of the public and drinks retailers. Research finds that many people in Scotland are unaware of how the deposit return scheme would operate and why it is necessary. Some of the study’s participants even perceived the refund charge as another form of taxation imposed by the Scottish government.

Communication plays a critical role. A different study, which explored the public acceptance of a deposit return scheme in Catalonia, Spain, revealed that the way a scheme is presented to users and how much information is given influences how it is perceived. More information (given over the phone) tended to yield a more positive viewpoint.

Clearly, more information is required for Scotland’s recycling scheme to be accepted more widely.

If designed correctly, deposit return schemes can encourage recycling by raising the value of plastic waste. Recycling and reuse schemes are also made more technically and economically viable if backed up with tax incentives.

But the barrier facing the adoption of a deposit return scheme in the UK is a lack of uniformity. We should not be asking if Scotland should adopt a scheme or not. Instead, plans for the rest of the UK to adopt this approach should be accelerated to get the whole of the UK on the same page.

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Norway’s deposit return scheme achieves a 97% recycling rate, bolstered by an environmental tax on bottle producers.

Producers must recycle over 95% of their containers to avoid the tax, which encourages the use of uniform, easily recyclable materials and improves the quality of recycled products.

The government’s combination of financial incentives and regulatory measures is central to this success .

Germany is recognized as a global leader, with households sorting waste into up to six bins, supported by robust government policies such as Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which mandates that manufacturers manage the lifecycle of their products, including disposal and recycling.

This has led to high recycling rates, reduced landfill use, and strong public participation, further reinforced by awareness campaigns .

Title:

Content: Published: 04/19/2024

A conversation with Vihaan Agarwal (’26), who along with his brother is revolutionizing recycling in India to protect human health and the environment.

By Jamie Hansen, Global Health Communications Manager

Cover photo courtesy of Vihaan Agarwal, One Step Greener

Vihaan Agarwal (‘26) fell in love with nature from an early age. As a toddler growing up in New Delhi, India, he grasped for the flash cards with pictures of birds and later adopted his grandfather’s passion for nature photography. He and his younger brother always requested trips to parks and wildlife refuges, and he still remembers with awe sighting a leopard striding across a majestic old gate in Ranthambore National Park.

So when worsening air pollution driven by trash-burning in landfills threatened both his health and ability to enjoy the natural world, he took action. At age 14, he and his 11-year-old brother Nav began organizing their neighborhood to sort trash and deliver what couldn’t be composted to recycling companies — thereby diverting it from landfills.

That movement grew into One Step Greener, an environmental nonprofit and social initiative working toward a zero-waste future through waste management, recycling, education, and tree planting. They also prioritize providing dignified, safe jobs to workers in the informal waste collection sector. Today, they serve more than 25,000 households for whom they have recycled about 600,000 kilograms of waste, meanwhile planting more than 40,000 trees. In 2021, the brothers received the International Children’s Peace Prize for their work.

Now a sophomore at Stanford, Agarwal continues to expand One Step Greener’s impact while pursuing his education with a focus on sustainability and international relations. While juggling coursework with 3:00am Zoom calls to New Delhi isn’t always easy, he’s energized by the ideas and resources he’s gained from fellow students and faculty.

 “A lot of the ideas I have for taking the organization forward wouldn’t be possible if I wasn’t here at Stanford,” he said.

He shared with us his story and insights for creating positive change that benefits people and the environment, one manageable step at a time.

How did you first become passionate about addressing pollution?

Around 7th grade, I started having a lot of asthma issues at the same time that air pollution in New Delhi started getting really bad. I was deeply passionate about wildlife and the environment and really wanted to do something to solve the problem that was hitting me hardest— air pollution. I planted some trees, but my research showed me this wouldn’t have a great impact and I wanted to take it a step further. At first I didn’t see anything more I could do about it.

Then, around 8th grade, pollution grew even worse, requiring children to attend school online or wear masks to protect themselves. Around that time, I was reading a newspaper on the way to school and saw an article about a fire in the city’s largest landfill, which was causing pollution throughout the city.

In that car ride, I made the connection that my waste was ending up in this landfill, which was causing air pollution, which affected me. I knew I needed to find a way to stop my waste from ending up in landfills.

Faced with such a daunting problem, how did you get started?

I started by doing some research and learned that the best way to keep the waste out of landfills was to segregate it so that it could be more easily recycled or composted. But this research was from countries with effective management systems for the waste, which was not the case in India. There were plenty of recycling companies in India, but they recycled imported waste from other countries. The supply chain just didn’t exist for them to get the waste from households like mine.

So I started composting my wet waste at home and storing my dry waste in the backyard. There was a point when our backyard became a mini mountain of dry waste, and my grandfather told me I had to do something about it.

But when I started calling recycling companies, they had no interest in handling my small amount of waste. We have WhatsApp groups for neighborhoods in India, so I messaged ours and invited our neighbors to get involved in this green initiative. That’s around the time we came up with the name One Step Greener, because we were trying to take one step towards a cleaner future. Within two weeks about 100 people signed up, which shocked us. We realized we needed to formalize the process, as my parents had been driving me around to pick up everyone’s recycling in their car and weren’t thrilled about it. We hired a truck and driver, and started storing the recycling in a vacant apartment basement that someone donated to us.

Were there ever moments of doubt or times you felt you were in over your head?

Oh, plenty of times. I remember walking into this basement filled with trash and thinking, “what in the world am I supposed to do with all this?”

I think I was definitely scared. But I was so passionate about this because I genuinely felt like every kilogram of waste I recycled was a personal victory. As one person, I’d been able to do something that benefited the environment.

At the time, we were very young and still in school, and we were growing alongside our organization in a sense. We took advice from our grandparents and parents, and my mom was very involved in the beginning since we were so young. But mostly there was just a lot of experimentation —  going out, doing it, trying new things and figuring out how it would work. We very quickly realized we needed to set up systems by which things could work without us being involved on a day-to-day basis. We formalized our NGO and hired a supervisor and a team to segregate the waste. As the organization grew from 100 to 2,000 to now 25,000 homes we kept adding systems.

Now that you’re at Stanford, how does your education inform One Step Greener and vice versa? How are you balancing these huge demands?

It’s not always easy to balance. The time difference is most challenging. I finish my schoolwork by 9 or 10pm and I’m able to take a few meetings by the time it’s morning in India. But the main thing is that I don’t have to do a lot because so much is on autopilot. We have a proper management team and my brother back home is still there to help run things.

I am trying to add value by fundraising and using my time at Stanford to incorporate technology into the organization. We are committed to ensuring that we do our work in a green way.  For instance, the vehicles that haul the waste are electric and I’m learning to map more efficient routes.

We recycle more than 95 percent of the waste that comes to us, and the rest (mostly single-use plastic) we store, which is expensive. Now, I’m trying to figure out manufacturing processes that will allow us to recycle single-use plastic. I’m talking to friends, classmates, and professors here to learn how to create the machines we need. We’re trying to close the loop completely.

What’s your advice to others looking to take that first step to address climate change or pollution?

Find an issue that’s affecting you or that you’re deeply passionate about. Think about it and think about what you can do – not necessarily to make massive change, but what’s the first step you can take?

Climate change is such a big existential threat that the natural response is fear — to question whether we can make a difference as one person. But fear shouldn’t lead to inaction. The premise of the speech that me and my brother gave when we won the Children’s Peace Prize was “take the plunge.” Yes, these problems seem so daunting. But unless you take the plunge, you’re not going to see how much you can do and the ripples you can make.

——-

Agarwal will be participating in the “Pollution and Health: Generating Evidence and Catalyzing Action to Advance Human and Planetary Health” conference on May 20-21.  Learn more and register for the conference.

Anyone wishing to learn more or get involved can visit One Step Greener here.

Sweden’s waste-to-energy programs, where over 99% of household waste is recycled or converted to energy, are driven by effective sorting systems and government-led public awareness initiatives [general summary].

Japan’s meticulous waste sorting, guided by detailed municipal instructions and government-supported education, results in high recycling rates and strong community compliance [general summary].

South Korea’s volume-based waste fee system charges residents according to the waste they generate, incentivizing recycling and reduction.