drinks

Getting people to recycle isn’t always easy. The bottled beverages we buy at the supermarket often require a small deposit that we can get back by recycling the bottle, but often, we just don’t.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia tested the idea of giving people returning bottles a small chance of winning a big cash prize instead of a 10-cent deposit return. The result was that people recycled 47% more bottles.

Changing how we reward recycling made a big difference. When given a choice between a guaranteed return and a possible large reward, many chose the lottery option. When people were randomly assigned to one type of reward or the other, those in the lottery group brought in almost three bottles for every two returned by the other group.

This isn’t a new idea. Norway has a recycling lottery, and their bottle return rate is close to 100 percent. The way it works there is there are reverse vending machines in grocery stores all over the country. The revenues generated by the machines is split in four ways: 34.5% of the gross revenue goes to the Red Cross; 35% goes to the people who bring in their bottles in the form of winnings in the lottery; 9.75% goes to the stores for managing the machines and the lottery; and 10.75% goes to the operating company of the Recycling Lottery.

The Canadian experiments demonstrate that a recycling lottery could be effective in more places than Norway. However, it shouldn’t completely replace the guaranteed refund option, since some people depend on it for income.

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How lottery-style bottle returns could transform recycling

Photo, posted July 9, 2011, courtesy of Mr.TinMD via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Direct air capture (DAC) is process that removes carbon dioxide out of the air and stores it away where it can no longer trap heat in the atmosphere. It is intended to be a way of getting rid of the greenhouse gases that have built up in the atmosphere. In principle, it’s a great idea. In practice, it is a huge challenge.

In 2017, a company called Climeworks became the first company to take carbon dioxide out of the air and sell it as a product for use in carbonated drinks and in greenhouses. In 2021, the company opened a DAC plant called Orca in Iceland that captures CO2 and permanently stores it underground. Clients like Microsoft pay Climeworks for doing this as a way of offsetting their own emissions.

Recently, Climeworks has started operating a new plant called Mammoth – also in Iceland – that will be able to capture about 10 times more carbon dioxide than Orca. Iceland is a prime location for DAC technology because its abundant geothermal energy makes powering it cheap and environmentally friendly.

Mammoth, when fully operational, will remove about 36,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, the largest DAC system in the world. But there is a long, long way to go. Microsoft alone emits nearly 13 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

There are multiple DAC projects in development including several in the United States being funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The four DAC hubs being developed under the program are each supposed to have the capacity to capture at least a million metric tons of CO2 a year.

Whether DAC can make a real difference remains to be seen.

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The world’s largest carbon removal plant is here, and bigger ones are on the way

Photo credit: Climeworks

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

A recycling lottery

Getting people to recycle isn’t always easy. The bottled beverages we buy at the supermarket often require a small deposit that we can get back by recycling the bottle, but often, we just don’t.

Web Links

The largest carbon removal plant

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