Beach Patrol Australia promotes action on a limited number of campaigns to reduce common plastic litter items in the environment. We promote through social media, petitions, news articles, attending expos, letters to government departments, engaging with all our members, discussing with corporate groups that come on cleans and presenting to school children at school visits.
We are calling for bottle tops to be tethered to the bottle itself. This prevents the top from being discarded as litter and a becoming potential threat to wildlife. In addition, it would greatly increase the recycling of the bottle cap material. The cap material is generally good clean plastic which is ideal for recycling.
This feature was mandated in Europe in 2024, and has been adopted in several other locations. It is time for tethered caps to come here. Our data shows that there are 2.5 times as many littered caps as their are plastic bottles. That makes for a lot of littered plastic tops.
Use #tetheredbottlecaps in your social posts to add momentum to this campaign.
Sign our petition
Most container deposit scheme depots consist only of automatic reverse vending machines (RVMs) that scan the bar code as the container is fed into them.
However, many containers that our volunteers find are crushed, faded or have labels washed off them. The RVMs cannot read their barcodes and therefore reject the container. We think this goes against the intent of the scheme set up by the state governments to get containers back for recycling to reuse those materials and therefore reduce their littering. Hence, at the moment this scheme is only partially successful for groups like Beach Patrol Australia.
We are calling for sensible changes to the CDS to make more containers eligible for refunds.
The CDS currently refunds 10 cents per container. Yet this is only yielding approx. 56% of containers sold. We support the push to increase the refund to 20 cents per container. This will result in many more containers being returned for the deposit and subsequently many more containers being recycled.
There is a push from several parties to expand the range of containers that are eligible in the CDS. This includes;
This will be implemented in the ACT during 2027. We are calling for implemented into all other states and territories, to recover these resources.
Several regulations have been introduced since Beach Patrol Australia began campaigning on them...
Victoria's Container Deposit Scheme (CDS Vic) officially commenced on 1 November 2023. This is a scheme whereby returned containers are worth 10 cents. People returning containers can keep the refund or donate it to a charity listed with the scheme. The scheme was set up by the state government and is operated by private contractors
Victoria’s ban on single-use plastic items including cotton buds, straws, drink stirrers, cutlery, plates, and other items commenced on 1 February 2023. Prior to then it was not uncommon to collect 200 or so plastic straws every clean on some beaches.
31 Oct 2019 — The Victorian Government implemented a statewide ban on lightweight plastic shopping bags at almost all retailers across Victoria.
This was a ban on shops handing out free thin plastic bags. Millions of them were recklessly handed out for years, polluting our neighbourhoods and waterways. Since the ban was enacted very few bags are found.