On 6 October the Glass Packaging Forum (GPF) released a report they commissioned from Grant Thornton on a proposed mandatory product stewardship scheme (or extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme) for glass packaging. This would be an alternative to glass being included in the Government’s proposed beverage container return scheme (CRS).

The EPR model proposed in the Grant Thornton report would be mandatory for all companies using glass packaging (jars and bottles), who would have to pay a levy of $200 per tonne of glass packaging put on the market. This money would be used to cover the costs of separately collecting colour-sorted glass at kerbside. The EPR scheme would also make it compulsory for the hospitality industry to colour separate their glass packaging and to pay for it to be collected.

The Grant Thornton report suggests that this EPR model would be cheaper than a CRS, while achieving higher collection rates and creating fewer emissions. 

We have read the report in full and still think that the beverage CRS should include glass as this will be the most cost-effective, fair and environmentally beneficial outcome for Aotearoa. You can read why we support a glass-in CRS here. Our position is based on decades of advocacy and research by the Zero Waste Network and our members on this topic.

The conclusions of the Grant Thornton report are based on assumptions about both the CRS and EPR model that are not always robust or reliable. The report sets the CRS up as a negative strawman, which makes it perform badly in the modelling. Meanwhile, many of the report’s assumptions about the EPR’s performance are based on aspirational targets that often aren’t clearly linked to concrete, evidence-based actions likely to achieve those targets. For example the assumption that the EPR model will achieve a 15% reduction of glass to market, and a 90% collection rate. As a result, the report produces anomalous findings about CRS.

The proposed EPR model looks much like the current GPF voluntary scheme, but with mandatory participation, a $200 p/t levy (which seems unrealistically low given that the costs of separately collecting glass and transporting it to the recycler already exceeds this rate in most parts of the country), and it continues to rely on councils to collect glass through the kerbside system. The commissioned report feels like a last ditch attempt by the glass industry to try and derail CRS legislation, now that NZ is getting close to pushing this policy over the line.