Welcome to the “New Plastics Economy” or better recyling in plain english.

Every year in January the great and the good (allegedly), come together in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, where Bankers, Heads of Industry, and some leading Politicians come together to put the world to rights!

A new action plan was agreed in Davos this January to significantly increase the amount of plastic packaging reused or recycled to 70%. Under the “New Plastics Economy” as it has been named over 40 heads of industry including Coca Cola, Unilever, Mars and Danone have added their endorsement as core partners.

In what I guess is back to basics, all have committed to rethink fundamental designs issues, reducing material volumes, rationalising material mixing and working hard to use best practices for the collection, sorting and recycling of plastic packaging.

For me one of the best ways to ensure that plastic bottles, that make up a significant portion of the packaging under discussion don’t end up dumped in landfill or discarded would be to levy a 10p charge on any bottle of this type, refundable when returned for recycling. There would be straight forward ways to avoid “cheating” by for example punching a hole in the side on return so only “whole” bottles are refunded. As kids glass fizzy pop bottles had a small deposit charge and all were spotted and returned as a means of bolstering pocket money.

Just a small cash incentive would solve the discarded bottle problem as a start to the Davos commitment.