Will a plastic bottle tax work in the U.K.?

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After the successful plastic bag tax in the United Kingdom that saw plastic bag use collapse by 80%after the 5 pence per bag charge was introduced we are now going to attempt a plastic bottle tax. The west’s biggest export to China has been junk and recycling over the years but now they don’t want it and we have to get rid of it ourselves. It’s amazing how the bag tax has been successful everywhere it’s been tried as I thought a lot more people would simply pay the five pence and not worry about too much plastic in the environment and certainly not carry old carrier bags around with them as substitute. Some upmarket stores have not seen as much take up as the customers prefer to let people know where they have been shopping that day through their plastic carrier bag. The plastic bottle tax is a little bit harder to sell. Firstly shops need to be on board as they are expected to help pay for the recycling banks and vending machines that will accept old bottles and pay back your deposit. Some countries in Europe already have the system up and running but the charge has to be quite high to get people to want to return the bottles. We know people are prepared to pay a little bit more for products for convenience and so absorb the tax. We have a scheme up and running in some coffee shops where customers can bring their own reusable cups with them and get a small discount for their coffee so to discourage throwaway cup use. The government want the plastic bottle tax to be 20 pence (30 cents) a bottle so people make an effort to store plastic bottles at home and bring them to the recycle machines all at once and get some decent cash back. In America this system has been in pace for decades and why you see the bums with the shopping trolleys full of cans and glass bottles. It keeps the streets clean of cans and bottles and good money for the bums to buy liquor with. If the UK does go along with this system I can see the same thing here as the government certainly enjoy creating homeless people to collect those bottles. It may be a boost to retailers where they charge the deposit and percentage of people don’t bring the bottles back and they keep the deposit. I know as kids when we had this system in place we loved collecting the bottles to take them back to the pubs and shops to get the deposits. But the Oceans are full of crap and we need to act and you do feel if the public are encouraged to do the right thing through a tax threat they generally do.