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What Beverage Containers Can Teach Australia’s Next Phase of Packaging Reform
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What Beverage Containers Can Teach Australia’s Next Phase of Packaging Reform
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What Beverage Containers Can Teach Australia’s Next Phase of Packaging Reform
Thursday 10 September 2026
Shannon Doherty-Andall, Sustainability Manager, Australian Beverages Council
The current discussion around circular economy policy in Australia tends to take a broad and abstract form: fee structures, material flows, and design standards – to name a few.
In beverage packaging, we see those issues already made tangible.
Beverage containers are embedded in everyday life and already subject to one of Australia’s most established product stewardship models: container deposit schemes. That makes non-alcoholic beverage packaging Australia’s most useful and fulsome test case for circular economy policy. As Australia’s most successful EPR scheme, CDS may not provide every answer, but it does show what happens when packaging design, consumer participation, collection infrastructure, material recovery, industry funding and regulation are brought together in a practical way.
One of the strengths of CDS is that they give consumers a clear incentive to return eligible containers. It may seem simple, but it matters.
Circular systems rely not only on regulation or industry action, but on millions of individual decisions made every day by every one of us.