Bevco rolled out the return scheme on a pilot basis in 10 outlets each in Thiruvananthapuram and Kannur districts on September 10 in an effort to mitigate the environmental pollution caused by plastic bottles.
| Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT
Around 40% of the plastic bottles through which liquor is retailed by Kerala State Beverages Corporation Ltd. (Bevco) are being returned on an average as part of an experimental plastic bottle buy-back scheme, Bevco chairman and managing director (CMD) Harshita Attaluri has said.Bevco rolled out the return scheme on a pilot basis in 10 outlets each in Thiruvananthapuram and Kannur districts on September 10 in an effort to mitigate the environmental pollution caused by plastic bottles.Responding to complaints of long queues at Bevco outlets, especially during peak hours, and piling up of returned bottles, Ms. Attaluri acknowledged that the process of sticking QR-coded labels onto bottles for which a refundable deposit is charged from customers was causing longer queues at the billing counter.Also, Kudumbashree workers who were to be deployed to collect the returned bottles were yet to join work. So, both sticking of labels onto bottles and issuing a receipt for the deposit of ₹20 charged from customers and bottle collection were now being handled by Bevco staff, overburdening them, she said.Bevco shop in-charges also had to count the returned bottles at the end of the day and store them safely.Challenges remainReferring to customers being vocal about having to shell out an additional ₹20 as refundable deposit or returning the bottle to the same outlet it was purchased from to get a refund, Ms. Attaluri agreed that there was indeed customer dissatisfaction.There were hiccups, but the pilot was intended to gauge how smoothly the system worked and how it could be fine-tuned to address the gaps, she said. “We will incorporate the learnings and move forward with the project,” the Bevco CMD said.The Kudumbashree workers who would man the return counters were expected to come in by the end of the week, she confirmed. Their work would involve checking the label on the returned bottles, scratching them off, and storing the bottles.Ms. Attaluri said Clean Kerala Company Ltd. had started carting away the collected bottles from the outlets for recycling. Till then, sacks of returned bottles had been eating up floor space that could be used for fresh stock.The schedule for removing the collected bottles from the outlets would be decided by Clean Kerala after taking into account the volume of the collected bottles.Scheme expansion mootedMs. Attaluri said Bevco was considering expanding the bottle buy-back scheme to glass bottles and cans too. In such a case, a system would have to be put in place for collecting different kinds of bottles, she said.“Customer unhappiness could be addressed to an extent if they were allowed to return the bottles to a Bevco outlet other than the one the liquor was purchased from,” he said.Bevco, she said, would require three months before expanding the programme across the State by January, 2026. In the meantime, proposals by some companies to set up booths for collecting the bottles or even disposing of them were being explored.“We will incur a cost of ₹1 lakh a month for each outlet under the present arrangement of printing the label, hiring a person for collecting the returned bottles, and other processes. Outsourcing these processes will take them off Bevco’s hands, without the corporation incurring any cost,” Ms. Attaluri said.Visits to Bevco outlets had revealed that the employees were optimistic about a revenue gain for the government from the refundable deposits since not even half the bottles sold were being returned on a day. The employees also reported seeing fewer plastic bottles dumped by the roadsides or some corner in the vicinity of the Bevco outlets. Published - September 18, 2025 03:14 pm IST
