Palmerston North is leading the charge to stop enough recyclable drink cans and bottles to fill 700 Boeing 747s a year from polluting the environment.

The city council is pushing a proposal to introduce a national deposit and refund scheme to ensure the containers are returned, not wasted.

Palmerston North mayor Grant Smith, supported by the Auckland Council, will put the case for the recycling scheme to Local Government New Zealand's annual conference in Dunedin on Sunday.

The plan would encourage consumers to return more glass, aluminium and plastic drink containers by making them worth about 10c each.

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Smith will ask councils to endorse the concept of a nationally mandated beverage container deposit system (CDS) and ask the government to require industry to develop and implement the scheme within two years.

The proposal was first raised in Palmerston North by city councillor Chris Teo-Sherrell.

The importance of doing something about the volumes of recyclable containers being wasted was backed up by a 2015 report by environment consultancy group Envision New Zealand.

It estimated New Zealanders drank about 2.23 billion beverages each year, and more than half of the empty containers, nearly 46,000 tonnes a year, ended up in landfills or as litter.

Teo-Sherrell said the costs of disposing of containers that were thrown away then fell to ratepayers.

The product stewardship programme would shift the burden back to producers and consumers.

Smith said the proposal had his full support.

He said people would not leave bottles and cans lying around the streets for someone else to clean up if they were worth money.

The Auckland Council is carrying out an economic analysis of how the container deposit scheme would work.

City council rubbish and recycling asset engineer Natasha Hickmott said it was too soon to predict how the scheme would impact on the Awapuni recycling centre.

It was unclear what range of containers, from 2.25-litre plastic fizzy bottles to milk bottles and aluminium cans, would be included.

It was also uncertain how much the scheme would change people's recycling behaviour.

She expected when people were at home, they would continue the habit of putting all of their recyclables in the kerbside bin.

The materials recycling facility would likely remain a collection point, and there would be a financial gain for returning containers to the suppliers.

Envision's recommendations were that the government should declare beverage containers a priority product requiring a mandatory product stewardship scheme be put in place.

Private businesses and community groups would be able to set up business at drop-off points where people could get refunds for returning containers.

Palmerston North City Environmental Trust project co-ordinator Helen Lehndorf​ said incentives for recycling were good, and getting cash back was a bonus.

The scheme would reward positive consumer behaviour and get people into the habit of being more conscious about packaging and recycling.