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Jane Huntington and her husband make up the entire workforce of their craft brewery in Tasmania's Derwent Valley.
Key points:
- A small craft beer business is avoiding selling into the territories to avoid the extra administrative load of container-deposit schemes
- South Australia was the first Australian state to introduce a container deposit scheme in the 1970s
- The Independent Brewers Association is advocating for a national scheme
Hops have been grown in the region for more than a hundred years, along with fresh produce.
Ms Huntington loves experimenting and creating new small-batch brews using locally grown food.
"There are cherry producers, people grow plums, mulberries, pumpkins, all these beautiful things, so I'm interested in the beverage and what ferments and what's really unique," she said.
But Ms Huntington said that creativity was being stifled by the paperwork involved in the several container deposit schemes that run around the country.
Their small business is signed up to the schemes in four states, but they do not sell into the territories to avoid the administrative load of another two schemes.
"It's discouraging innovation and it's discouraging unique identities of small producers who are trying to sell across this country," she said.
To sell into a state or territory with a scheme, beverage producers must register each unique product.
The same product but in two different-size bottles means two registrations, as does slight variation in the product.
That is then duplicated up to six times across the country.
"Then monthly we need to report how many units or bottles we are selling into that [state or territory's] scheme," Ms Huntington said.
In her small business, that meant manually counting which state she had sold X number of bottles into each month.
"So I'm sitting there spending valuable time trying to negotiate just so I can be compliant with their systems, and then paying an invoice for $3.52," she said.
"It seems overly onerous for a few hundred dollars a year for a small producer who's trying to negotiate and do the right thing, because we all want litter reduction."
Calls for a national scheme
Victoria and Tasmania are set to join the rest of the states and the territories later this year in operating container deposit schemes.
South Australia was the first Australian state to introduce a container deposit scheme in the 1970s.
New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and the territories all followed suit between 2012 and 2020.