Design

Any number of design decisions are made before a beverage container is manufactured, such as shaping, sizing, thickness, and material type. These choices, made by the producer, play a critical role in determining the container’s potential for recovery and recycling within a closed-loop system. Having a set of design-for-recycling standards included in DRS legislation helps guide those choices from the very beginning of a container’s journey and ensures that it can be recovered and recycled in a closed-loop manner.

Some materials are not readily recyclable in current recycling processes because their design significantly degrades the quality of recycling streams. For example, polylactic acid (PLA) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) are contaminants in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling processes and reduce the quality of PET.

Elements to consider when designing beverage containers for recycling are detailed below.

Material composition:

• Separability of components
• Use of additives, fillers, and colourants
• Use of sleeves and labels

Material form:

• Shape, size, and thickness
• Product residues (how easy the product is to empty of its content)
• Barriers and coatings

Toxicity:

• Material
• Labelling and adhesive
• Printing ink

Legislation that specifies the use of modulated producer fees can help incentivise eco-design. This means that fees paid by producers vary according to aspects of their product’s design, with more “economically recyclable” materials charged at a lower rate than difficult-to-recycle materials.

Marking

When it comes to marking and labelling the container itself, best practice dictates the use of standard text, like “Return for Refund,” and/or printing a logo, as well as a barcode, on each container for easy identification. 

Barcodes can also enable RVMs to recognise and count each deposit container, in order to track which containers are returned. Barcodes also help to ensure that containers not eligible for redemption are not accidentally accepted. This provides a baseline level of system accountability.  

Decisions on what level of marking and labelling to legislate are determined by a number of factors, including:

• Level of deposit 
• Proximity of population centres in bordering markets  
• Impacts on distribution of beverages 
• Costs of additional labels (including redesign) 
• Likely cost to system of fraudulent activity 

Registration

Consumers must be able to return all eligible containers to any collection point, in order to create a convenient and effective system. Requiring brand owners to register their products with the system operator, who then provides that information to return point operators, is a direct way to help reach this goal.  

High-performing DRSs around the world require beverage producers to provide the following information as part of the registration process:   

• Company name and contact information  
• Beverage container information, such as brand/product name/flavour, volume, material type and colour
• Barcode