Returnable containers

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32425, 12 October 1970, Page 12

Returnable containers

Sir, —I read in the weekly newsletter from the N.Z. Consulate General in New York the progress of the country’s first aluminium smelter at Bluff with interest and some concern. Having spent a couple of hours this week-end collecting indestructible aluminimum cans (i.e. “tins”) in one of this city’s picturesque parks, I feel it would be a very retrograde step if these cans were widely used in New Zealand in place of returnable bottles. Aluminium cans are fast becoming a blight on the American scene and one often sees them even in National and State parks carelessly thrown alongside a track. Many communities are already considering banning completely both cans ana non-returnable bottles as one step to reducing environmental littering. The city of Minneapolis budgets $640,000 annually to dispose of these articles. The alternative seems to be to have a deposit high enough to ensure return of cans and bottles and also that N.Z. Aluminium Smelters, Ltd, is in a position from the outset to accept aluminimum products for recycling.—Yours, etc., R. A ROBINSON, B.V.Sc. University of Minnesota, St Paul, Minn., U.S.A October 3, 1970.