Deposit return scheme (recycling)

The Scottish system was binned due to Westminster interference alone

Agree just another burden placed on people who have already being doing their bit recycling using green bin and bringing excess including glass to recycling centres. Now same people will be financially penalised unless they bring a small subset of that recycling to another location.

I am hoping charities \ schools might run collections, claim the deposit as funding.

Was that a thing when there were deposits on glass bottles... maybe scouts involved?

You should contact the people you order online from and ask them if they will be offering you the "return of deposit" as part of their business.

By the way "I have never heard of anything so f*cking ridiculous before in my life."

You must be really, really rural so, and not have a TV.

Posted in another forum about this but probably suits here better:

Definitely not a bargain alert any more. All this is going to cost companies a lot of money and all that will get passed on to us, the customer.

My local Lidl and many more I've seen have had the builders in for the last few months retrofitting for this scheme. In our case the trolley bay has been converted to 'inside' the building for a room for it and the whole shop entrance redone. That ain't cheap.

A recent news story quotes Tesco as spending €200,000 for a machine in ONE store, multiply that across all the shops.

Suppliers and shops now have massive new amounts of admin because the deposits have to be invoiced and paid separately to the goods.

All in all it's going to be millions that will be passed back onto the customers through higher prices.

And those of us who actually do use the green bin correctly will be further penalised as it's an almost certainty that waste collectors will up their recycling bin prices to compensate for the loss of aluminum can sales to them, one of the few items which was of value to them.

"It’s quite a bigger plan than we had anticipated," said Darrin Honer, country operations manager at Tesco Ireland. "Every single store in the country has to be retrofitted, to fit in the machine. This investment for this particular store is over €200,000," he said. "To multiply that out, it’s quite a huge investment."

'The country’s drinks producers also need to sign up to the scheme - and track every single can or plastic bottle they ship.

That’s resulting in a significant amount of new administration - especially for smaller producers.

"We have to split into invoices, we have to put the deposits on the invoices separately from the cans, we have to make a return to the scheme operators in terms of how many cans have gone out," said David Walsh-Kemmis, founder and managing director at Ballykilcavan Brewing Company in Co Laois.

"I have to say we’re in favour of the scheme - we want to see as much aluminium being recycled as possible - but for a small brewery for us it really does create a significant administrative and cashflow problem."'

I was going to rant about this thinking all my plastics have to be recycled this way but I've since learned it won't affect me as I never buy canned or bottled drinks, other than milk which is exempt. The last time I recall I did was during the heatwave in June when I bought a few bottles of water only cuz I'd run out of what I'd taken with me from home. Phew.

I can't believe there is not a more simple way to achieve the aim. What is the cost to the environment of making and maintaining these machines? They take up an awful lot of space too which I'm sure the supermarkets would rather use for something else.

There seems to be a phycological conditioning element to this scheme which I find a bit disturbing. Like the hassle you have to go through is intentional.

Anything over 3 litres is, everything below is charged the fee.

The same people who come up with every other scheme that costs us more money, the Government.

Here's one of the better synopses I've seen of it:

"How will the Scheme work?

Under the Scheme, producers of in-scope products will be required to pay Re-turn a ‘producer fee’ which is intended to cover:

1. the costs of collecting and recycling in-scope products;
2. the costs of data gathering and reporting in relation to the Scheme;
3. the cost of business and consumer awareness raising measures in relation to the Scheme; and
4. Re-turn’s administration costs.

Retailers are required to pay a ‘deposit fee’ to producers when they purchase in-scope products.

When a consumer purchases an in-scope product, they will be charged the ‘deposit fee’ in addition to the price of the product. Consumers may return empty, undamaged in-scope products to a retailer in order to receive a full refund of the consumer’s deposit fee."

So basically us the customers will end up paying more for all of that.

The WEEE levy can only be used to process WEEE and as such was significantly cut a few years in as there was too much money being collected. Also, it's not refunded - I'm not sure you quite understand that scheme.

This scheme will not make money for the state. That is not the intent

It works in every other country / US state that has one just fine.

This is not a new or rare idea. It will be required in the entire EU in time

It's actually an ancient idea - there were deposits on bottles when your grandparents or possibly parents were kids.

You keep saying some variety of 'because you recycle, then what is the point of creating this burden?'

The point is that not everyone does recycle. This is hoped to get recycling rates up.

Maybe in future there won't be 50 empty beer cans outside the playground in my local park every Saturday morning, the bin outside my local Spar won't be overflowing with Cola bottles, no almost-but-not-quite-empty cans will be left to leak onto bus/train seats, good citizens down on their luck will pick stray bottles and cans up off our urban streets like we see in cities abroad etc etc.

I do sympathise that a good recycler like yourself gets punished here, but there is a wider picture.

Just give the bottle to some poor chap who you consider less fortunate than yourself and the warm fuzzy feeling generated in your innards will be priceless😂 Spoiler alert that fuzzy feeling may not last forever

It works off the barcode. It will cost you more in printing and effort to circumvent the scheme. Bit like fake € coins costing more than €2.

Too much money being collected, thats a first. Maybe the same thing will happen with this scheme.

The upside to this will hopefully be a reduction in consumption and health problems associated with drinking too many soft drinks, beer, etc. Course the unintended consequence might be larger that 3L bottles being sold which could actually increase consumption.

Back in the day I always bought a pack of 10 cigs when heading out for a few drinks. When the 10 pack was banned I had to buy a 20 pack. For 10 marks how many cigs did I return home with after my night out.

I'd say they'd have been wasting their time complaining about it during that period also, doubtless they did get complaints along the lines of those mentioned here.

I heard someone on The Hard Shoulder on Newstalk earlier and he said that some retailers are looking at take back for delivery customers.

That seems to be the way to go but loading dirty returns into a van that is delivering food products may present challenges.

I'll post a link later if I can find the segment.

Yes. When everything - including all those things - went into the bin that you left outside your house that was paid for out of general taxation. There was still excessive illegal dumping - more than there is now.

What’s your point?