The chance at an unlikely but substantial monetary reward gets people more jazzed about recycling than a small but certain reward, according to a new study. The findings suggest that implementing “bottle lotteries” as part of deposit return schemes could increase recycling rates, at no extra cost to local governments.
Two trillion beverage containers are produced every year, but only 34% of glass bottles, 40% of plastic bottles, and 70% of aluminum cans get recycled. Fifteen countries, 11 U.S. states, and 12 Canadian provinces have bottle-deposit refund systems in which a small sum (about 5 to 45 cents) added to the price of each beverage sold is refunded when people return the empty container for recycling.
These schemes lead to recycling rates of 78.3% on average – much better, but still leaving millions of tons of recyclables moldering in landfills.
Enter the idea of a bottle lottery, which aims to bring to recycling the same thrill that attends buying a lottery ticket. Norway currently has the world’s only bottle-recycling lottery system, which was implemented in 1997. The country boasts impressive beverage container recycling rates of nearly 97%, but until now there have not been any causal studies to work out to what degree this is due to the lottery.
After spending so much time in Oregon, the idea of not having deposit is insane. The roads in Austin are littered with beverage containers.
In Oregon, a popular thing to do for the homeless was scavenge for bottles and cans. Really a win-win ... cleaning public spaces for admittedly a pittance.