Environment Minister Susan Close said the state government will release draft legislation later this year detailing a significant overhaul of the state’s recycling system in a bid to make the scheme more accessible.

It follows the release of a major consultation report, commissioned in January 2019, on proposed reforms to South Australia’s Container Deposit Scheme (CDS), which currently offers 10c refunds for bottles and cans.

The report showed 68 per cent of the more than 1000 respondents polled supported expanding the eligibility of 10c refunds to include glass beverage containers up to three litres in size.

It also showed 61 per cent support for including all plastic fruit/vegetable juice and cordial containers in the scheme and 46 per cent support for allowing refunds for unflavoured milk containers.

“There is a broad consensus across the community and business, including the resource recovery sector, for broadening the range of beverage containers captured by the CDS, along with strong support for an awareness campaign,” the report states.

The report also polled 28 per cent support for expanding the number of places people can receive 10c refunds for cans and bottles, rather than just existing recycling depots.

This includes support for “reverse vending machines”, which offer instant 10c refunds at convenient locations, such as supermarkets.

“Many of the responses in favour of broadening the range of return points supported all the suggestions, including return points at supermarkets, shopping centres and reverse vending machines,” the report states.

“Responses from the supermarket sector were supportive but offered the caveat that retailer involvement should be voluntary.”

Close said the state government was supportive of the push to introduce reverse vending machines although the push to expand the range of containers that can be recycled would require a national approach.

“What we want to do is make sure that it is as easy as possible,” she told ABC Radio this morning.

“We’re getting about 80 per cent of the beverage containers that have got the 10 cents on them, about 80 per cent of those come back through the deposit.

“In the other states you go along to the supermarket, in the car park there’s a machine and you just slot [the container] in, it recognises it by reading the barcode… and then it’ll spit out [money].

“All of this hasn’t been possible here, and we’re really hopeful that as we go for the next stage where we get the draft legislation… that we’re going to be able to modernise that and make it extremely easy for people.”

Close said a recycling Bill would be out for consultation later this year ahead of “proper reform” being legislated in 2023.

She said the question of whether wine and spirit bottles should be included “needs to be settled nationally”, with a ministerial council meeting to be held later this year.

“Now that we’ve got schemes that exists in every state, what we don’t want to do is start having wildly different products,” she said.

“We’ll get together and we’ll have that conversation about have we got the right range of products in this scheme.”