Bottlers looking for soft drink bottles

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32703, 4 September 1971, Page 21

Bottlers looking for soft drink bottles

(By

C. B. RENNIE)

Six million soft drink bottles worth $150,000 in refunds are lying around in homes in the South Island, and the industry is racking its brains trying to discover ways of encouraging people to return them.

The bottles remain where they are despite charity bottle drives, housewives’ spring cleaning, dad’s annual garage tidying, and the children’s shortage of pocket money.

Soft drink bottle manufacturers know by bitter experience that an increase in the bottles’ refund nets only a few hundred thousand extra bottles —a few months after the increase its back to square one, with more expensive orders to the bottle manufacturer.

The president of the New Zealand Soft-drink and Cordial Manufacturers Association Mr E. W. Robson, of Auckland, said he felt the cause of the lack of interest in the refunds on bottles was today’s affluence. “Once a upon a time, after a .game at Lancaster Park, there used to be hundreds of kids scrambling round for the empties. Now they just kick them out of the way as they leave.”

He said this typified the current attitude to the bottles, and this attitude was costing the manufacturers, and the consumer eventually a lot of money. “When the bottle refund was 3d that more or less equated with the acutal cost of the bottle. Now the refund on a bottle is three cents, but the bottle costs 15 cents to make.” Mr Robson said the more bottles that were not returned, the more it cost the bottler. In New Zealand at present, it was estimated there were 10,000,000 empty soft drink bottles, with refunds worth $300,000. Each time the refund went up, the manufacturer was trying to close the gap between the refund and the bottle’s cost Average life Mr Robson said that the average life of a soft drink bottle was two to two and a half years, and in this time it would be filled and re-filled 14 to 15 times. "Of course, some don’t even last one trip, and we are lucky if we can fill a bottle six times a year.” The association recently recommended that the refund be increased to 5c for ail bottles, big or small, but it has been left largely up to the individual bottler to decide. Most are reluctant to put 5c on the small bottle, because it is bought mainly by children, and they will be the ones who have to pay. In the Canterbury area, the refund is 5c for a big bottle, and 3c for a small one. Manufacturers here are trying to concentrate on getting the big bottle back, as it is the most expensive to make. Although it is not generally known, refunds are available on almost every kind of drink bottle sold in a dairy or liquor store. Fifty-eight varieties are listed by one bottle collector, which means householders in Christchurch throw away thousands of dollars worth of refundable bottles a-year. Odd shapes The only bottles which carry no refunds are the oddly-shaped ones—such as square gin bottles, Vat 68 bottles, and some wine bottles. Inquiries in Christchurch Showed that refundable bottles are regarded as a sort of “perk” in some jobs, not-

ably street rubbish collectors and rubbish dump attendants. ' All those nondescript- ' looking but clean cordial and wine bottles and of course soft-drink bottles are carefully collected from rubbish bins and bags, sorted and taken to the collecting agency—often in 20 or 30 dozen lots. The dirty bottles

are taken to the dump, and the attendants there, who have a lot of time on their hands, clean and sort them, and take them off to the agency too. One dump attendant in Christchurch admitted he made $3OO a year by this means—in addition to his scrap-metal activities.. However, most bottles find their way to the agency through more conventional means professional bottle collecting companies, and charity bottle drives. The vast

majority are returned through. hotels, dairies and groceries, but they trickle in from all kinds of unlikely sources. Several old-age pensioners have a full-time occupation hunting through city rubbish bins, and they make about two or three dollars a day. Bleary-eyed survivors from office parties are frequent callers at the collecting agency and others are just garage-cleaners and spring cleaners. A lot of the burden, mostly unwanted, for returning bottles falls on the shoulders and back-yards of dairyowners. “Handling charge” One said he knew the refund was supposed to be 5c for big bottles and 3c for small ones, but a lot of shops refunded only 4c and 2c, and kept the cent as a kind of “handling charge.” Some even charged 23 cents for a large bottle instead of 22 cents. “People complain about it, but mostly they just accept it.” Asked if he thought a higher refund would encourage more people to bring back the soft-drink bottles the dairy-owner said it probably would. No consumer resistance had been noticed when the refunds had been raised periodically over the years. The owner of a large dairy in Riccarton said the soft drink bottles were a curse. “Kids usually bring them back a dozen at a time, after they’ve been lying round for ages, getting filthy. It’s generally when the shop is busy, and I have to sort them out, add everything up, then wash my hands before I can serve the other customers. They’re a nuisance at the back of the shop, and you have to keep dozens of crates for them. “What is needed is a ! central depot for people to : take them back to.”