Lidl: 10c for used bottles and cans [Expired]

Was doing this in Belgium 25 years ago.

Buy a crate of beer bottles, return them all and get partial refund

I heard this being discussed in the uk -

The downside was that a very large chunk of government funding was gonna go towards setting up / running the scheme -

For 2 products that are largely recycled already ....

And economic to do so ..

It would be much better to see glass bottles accepted.

It's an arse if you're miles from a Lidl as I am.

I can see these things being choc a block with bottles and not being cleared out in a timely way as per usual Irish style.

I very much doubt the people working the store will have anything to do with clearing out or maintaining these machines.

Maybe people wont leave bags of bottles after them at full machines like they do at bins and bottle banks, they'd hate to see someone else profit from their bottles.

If this kicks off the cost of your recycling bin will increase. Taking some of the most valuable products from the stream will mean paying more to recycle the rest of your waste.

How much of our PET and aluminium wasn't getting recycled that will improve this? The people who correctly disposed of rubbish will continue and the people who didn't still won't.

In Germany years ago I saw the homeless searching bins for bottles to get the deposit back on. It'll start happening here but a lot of Irish people aren't tidy so while the German bins where left tidy I doubt ours will be.

I remember getting money for bottles in dunnes in cornelscourt in the 80s, I was only a kid so cannot remember the details.

I bring all my cans to the bottle bans already, I can empty a big bag really quickly. I am guessing this machine will take several seconds for each one. I imagine it will be getting full quickly so you will not only have queues but people having to bring big sacks of stuff back home again. I know there is a limit so people might not bring huge bags just yet, but when this ridiculous scheme comes into law they will.

They should be encouraging reUSE of bottles anyway.

Growing up, it was a nice steady income as a kid. Clearing the storage and getting money for it.

The key point being missed is here is not recycling, per se, its the littering of the countryside.

My wife, a German, walks through our estate most evenings, and brings a plastic bag and a "picker-upper". She gathers loads of plastic bottles, every day.

In Germany, you are charged 25c extra for these bottles and you get 25c back when you return them. People don't litter there because they know that they are throwing away 25c if they do. It'll be an interesting experiment to see if Irish people might be "tricked" into caring about the environment, because the litter I see shows that they don't currently.

Kids will pick up the bottles and bring them. Or when you go to Lidl yo do your shopping just bring , don’t go just to bring them.

In Germany it works by scanning the barcode so that will need you to store all the bottles and cans uncrushed at home taking up a huge amount of space before driving them down uncrushed to be put in the machine to scan. It's creating a whole industry out of nothing. Instead anyone illegally dumping should be subject to huge fines and jail, also publish their names twice yearly like Revenue do for tax defaulters.

This has been going on on the continent for so many years now and I've always been bewildered why it doesn't happen here. We are most definitely the outliers.

ah right, I wouldnt be bringing a rake of cans down on a motorbike unless I could crush them first.

If we already have green bins for putting aluminium cans into what is the purpose of these machines? Is it just to drive footfall to the supermarkets so people go in to spend money?

I don't know, for LIDL it's just a €1700 a week PR exercise for that branch, not sure what their aim is. For me it would mean me polluting more to make trips to these places to offload items I currently am recycling through the green bins with zero issue.

Could someone be smart and stockpile 3.6million cans in their back garden now and then process them once it's in place in 2023, this making €720k if they give 20cent on the can?

For the people who are already diligently disposing of their cans and bottles into their recycling bin, this is just more hassle though.

And its future impact on recycling bin prices for the ordinary consumer is unclear, if the presence of these items in the green bins has to some extent been subsidising the rest.

It definitely helps. Its not planning a trip to a bottle bank, you can drop them off as you go to a supermarket which for most people is every few days. It means you don't have a big build up of bottles/cans.

People who throw away cans on the street wont be encouraged to recycle by this, however what i see in the Netherlands is homeless people will pick them up and return them. It leads to less trash on the street.

Sometimes yes but there are companies who specialise in designing and installing these things. As others have said it is the norm in many European countries.

Glad I'm not the only one who thought this a little odd, scam greenwashing exercise.

I hate the whole idea. I already diligently recycle, washing and drying bottles and cans before putting them in my recycling bin or bringing bottles to a bring bank. I can't imagine how these machines are going to work with dirty bottles, product residues everywhere and the inevitable delays when someone decides its time to clear out a month or so of their recyclables. Make waste and recycling bins compulsory for every household, add it onto the property tax/ household charge. Might work fine in other countries but my experience with bottle banks and how they are abused here makes me skeptical.

Now you could be on to an idea here 🤣

Well part of the problem with bottle banks is they arent emptied enough. Go look at your local one after a long weekend and they are normally over full with people leaving bottles on the ground around them.