Calls for national container deposit scheme to stop ‘discouraging innovation’ of small producers – ABC News

Jane Huntington and her husband make up the entire workforce of their craft brewery in Tasmania’s Derwent Valley.

Key points:

Hops have been grown in the region for more than a hundred years, along with fresh produce.

Ms Huntington loves experimenting and creating new small-batch brews using locally grown food.

“There are cherry producers, people grow plums, mulberries, pumpkins, all these beautiful things, so I’m interested in the beverage and what ferments and what’s really unique,” she said.

But Ms Huntington said that creativity was being stifled by the paperwork involved in the several container deposit schemes that run around the country.

Their small business is signed up to the schemes in four states, but they do not sell into the territories to avoid the administrative load of another two schemes.

“It’s discouraging innovation and it’s discouraging unique identities of small producers who are trying to sell across this country,” she said.

To sell into a state or territory with a scheme, beverage producers must register each unique product.

The same product but in two different-size bottles means two registrations, as does slight variation in the product.

That is then duplicated up to six times across the country.

“Then monthly we need to report how many units or bottles we are selling into that [state or territory’s] scheme,” Ms Huntington said.

In her small business, that meant manually counting which state she had sold X number of bottles into each month.

“So I’m sitting there spending valuable time trying to negotiate just so I can be compliant with their systems, and then paying an invoice for $3.52,” she said.

“It seems overly onerous for a few hundred dollars a year for a small producer who’s trying to negotiate and do the right thing, because we all want litter reduction.”

Calls for a national scheme

Victoria and Tasmania are set to join the rest of the states and the territories later this year in operating container deposit schemes.

South Australia was the first Australian state to introduce a container deposit scheme in the 1970s.

New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and the territories all followed suit between 2012 and 2020.

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With another two states coming on board, Jon Burridge from the Independent Brewers Association said the duplication across eight schemes would severely increase the amount of administration work and costs involved for small producers.

“When it was first started, it was left to be run as a state-by-state basis but it’s grown,” he said.

“More producers have emerged in each state, plus the ability now to sell in states other than where your production facility is located is much easier with online stores.”

The Independent Brewers Association, which provides a united voice for independently owned breweries, is advocating for a national scheme.

At a minimum, it wants to see a single national registration, meaning scheme providers would all follow one process and brewers would register each product once.

Mr Burridge said a national scheme would be more simple for businesses and reduce administration load.

“It alleviates multiple schemes, it’s a more concise operation, it’s easier for brewers to follow, it’s less hassle administratively, it’s less hours of employment spent filling in the paperwork, it creates less confusion as well,” he said.

“Ideally, they’re some of the key aspects we’d like to see alleviated.”

A spokesperson for Container Exchange — a not-for-profit organisation running Queensland’s container refund scheme — said it was “in support of discussion and work at a national level to harmonise any administrative aspects of the container refund schemes”.

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