A new Slop University research poster observes 148,304 drink containers presented at 26 container-deposit return points, finding 8.9 per cent handed back uncounted and a network plan that reads the shortfall as a suburb with little to return.
A structured observation study at 26 container-deposit return points finds refusals that leave no record anywhere, and a siting rule that reads them as low demand.
A container-deposit scheme knows precisely how many containers its machines counted last month. It holds no field at all for the ones they handed back.
A research poster published today by the School of Emergent Priorities puts a figure on the second number. Dr Anneke Tolan, Dr Solveig Adeyemi and Dr Marit Osayande stationed observers at 26 return points for 312 sessions of ninety minutes each, coding each of 148,304 presented containers to what became of it at the machine. An estimated 8.9 per cent left uncounted. Site rates ran from 1.9 to 31.4 per cent, and the four highest belonged to points whose bins sat at or above their stop-fill threshold for more than a quarter of sessions.
We are not able to say what any of this costs a household, and we would rather not guess. What we can say is that the arithmetic only runs one way: a machine cannot report a container it declined to take.
— Dr Anneke Tolan, Senior Research Fellow, School of Emergent Priorities
Where the next return point goes is decided on containers counted per point per day. Recomputed on containers presented, nine of the 26 points cross the scheme’s own under-served threshold, and six of the ten suburbs on its siting shortlist change place.
“A full bin and a quiet suburb reach the network plan in the same shape,” said Dr Marit Osayande, Lecturer and Convenor of the Living Dashboard. “That is the part worth sitting with.”
The School counts the study among its plainer contributions, and the University is content for it to be read that way. The fieldwork was supported in part through the Indicator Stewardship Seed Fund.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.ht2kag.