THE Australian Greens have failed in their bid to introduce a national container deposit scheme.

They argued on Thursday that a 10 cent levy on bottles, cans and cartons would lift recycling rates and cut the amount of waste in the environment.

Greens senator Larissa Waters said a national scheme was needed to address the litter from 12 billion drink containers that Australians used every year.

"It seeks to practically address that only about half of them are recycled, where most of the remainder end up as litter or in landfill," she told parliament.

"Much of that runs into our precious marine environment."

South Australia has had a scheme since 1977 in which people get a cash refund for returning used plastic bottles and cans, and the Northern Territory introduced a scheme in January.

But Labor and coalition senators joined forces to strike down the Environment Protection (Beverage Container Deposit and Recovery Scheme) Bill 2010.

Labor senator Anne Urquhart earlier said the plan did not respect the cooperative work done by governments and industry to reduce packaging waste and litter.

"It is a heavy-handed national approach that seeks to undo the good work done at the COAG (Council of Australian Governments) table," she said.

Liberal senator Ian Macdonald said environment ministers from federal, state and territory governments had met as recently as August 24 at COAG where they agreed to undertake a more detailed analysis including regional and distributional impacts.

Originally published as Senate rejects container deposit scheme