Deposit return scheme (recycling)

Definitely, there's 25% of 6 bottles of wine at the moment, so will head up again soon.

Will be worth keeping an eye on prices next year!

Some of the people that would throw away now won't to get the deposit

Others will collect those that are thrown away to reclaim the deposit. Not a fan of this as a core part of it, but it happens

The vouchers are convertible to cash

But to claim the deposit back cans need to be in an undamaged state with the barcodes intact, which a large proportion of beach litter is not.

Funny feeling bottles of beer will become popular..

May be time to invest in a proper bin lock for my green bin, as I keep it out the front.

Don't fancy the idea of anyone tipping it over and going through it to look for plastic bottles and cans!

or 4. refund to contactless payment card / apple pay / Google pay linked account. This would be the most convenient - I rarely use cash. I'd prefer to get refunded the same way I originally paid.

If the cans dont have the barcode and logo it will be illegal to sell them after the end of may. Its illegal for a producer to put a product on the market after March 16. The gap in between is intended to clear the stock.

Yes the retailer has to log the information.

The deposit goes back to return and then is paid back to whoever pays the deposit back

The retailer gets a handling fee for every bottle they collect. That is paid by return. Return gets its money from a fee paid by producers for every bottle they pay on the market. They will also make money from sale of the metal and plastic back to the producers, who all want it and unclaimed deposits. Return is established on a not for profit basis.

Your recycling rate wont change much - maybe you would be incentivised to recycle bottles or cans you drink on the go or maybe you already recycle them. What will change is that your bottles are less likely to be contaminated and they will be more likely to be able to be used for food grade plastic again and the cans will be of a better quality for recycling.

(Glass) bottles are already popular for beer drinkers, in fact I've noticed the switch to cans by some microbreweries has increased the prices per litre for the customer so a reversal of this trend is no harm

Assuming the rare case of milk stouts should be exempt as are all dairy containers

I know, originally the only reason it was allowed in the Green bin is that Tetra Pak would take them back to a centralised plant in Europe, for 'recycling'. This was 15 years ago, so not sure if anything has changed.

I recall another post you put up about milk in clear bottles.

I understand that you have a problem with the taste.

I was in the UK a couple of weeks ago and the family I stayed with subscribe to a bottled milk delivery.

Apparently they are making a bit of a comeback there.

The milkman delivers the bottles to the doorstep each morning and takes away the empties.

Not taking away from your experience and I acknowledge that taste is personal.

I just found the milk delicious on cereal, in tea and in a glass on its own.

As I said the milk I got in the UK was fine but it was as you suggest in small bottles, a pint I think.

I use Tetra at home rather than plastic.

I'd agree about returning beer bottles.

If it was possible I would opt for it.

They do it in Germany and it seems to work ok.

No, it's just that the shop I buy milk in sells 1 litre in Tetra and only 2 & 3 litre in plastic.

I prefer opening just 1 litre at a time.

At a guess they want to increase the recycling rates of aluminium cans and plastic bottles. Presumably the recycling rates of milk containers and pet food is high enough already.

Disclaimer: I don't know what the recycling rates are on those products, just making an assumption here

Do you know how many people don't recycle and just throw recyclable stuff in the normal bin. It's very high. I live in an apartment complex with shared bin facilities and the amount of plastic bottles and cans you see thrown in the general waste is shocking.

It was pointed out earlier that milk bottles could give rise to unpleasant odours if put in the machine without being rinsed.

I suppose food cans would be pretty messy too.

PET (the type of plastic in a drink bottle) does tend to get recycled, because it has a value. That is one of the major things which is funding this scheme. It does currently go overseas to be turned into rPET, however there are already people looking at investing at local PET recycling solutions because the volumes of bottles which will be recovered will rise significantly and make a project, particularly one serving north and south, viable. Huge capital costs involved but doable if the volumes are there.

The current recycling rates are estimated to be about 60-65% for plastic bottles. The statutory target is 90% by 2030.

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Spotted the first machine in our local Tesco today. Looks pretty similar to some of the machines I've seen in Germany, although the machines here obviously lack the extra opening on the bottom to take back entire crates or multipacks. Sielaff, the manufacturer, is quite experienced in this field, so the hardware at least should be pretty good.

Also worth noting that the max. 2€ sign that was shown on a couple of pages earlier in this thread is nowhere to be seen. That might have been only for testing purposes.

Looking at the size of that machine I assume the machine crushes the returns after they have been scanned, the volume looks fairly small. Anyone seen any figures for the capacity of these machines?

Try and explain that to the fools on social media who are using the picture to scaremonger terribly gullible people.

Not going to happen. This isn't meant to make money

The RVM manufacturers definitely make money.

Netherlands introduced it quite recently. Various US states also recently. Working fine

It works fine everywhere, basically

Working fine in Germany since at least the early 2000s. Used it myself prior to emigrating to Ireland. At this point, it's a well established and mature system, And I see no reason why it shouldn't work over here. Ireland isn't that special.

It was implemented in California in 1987, currently it's 5c if under 24floz and 10c on 24 floz and above on almost any container that contained a liquid other than wine and dairy. The containers can be aluminum, glass, plastic resins and bi-metals. However you have to return these containers to specific recycling locations which usually attract drug users. 24floz is about 710ml so most containers, specifically beer are in the 5c bracket. It's seen by most over there as just being another tax (in fact - sales tax applies to the deposit at point of sale but not at return) and most just put their recycling into the household recycling bins.

However, their recycling rates are about 80% so even that very flawed system produces better results than what we have at the moment

I'm not a fan of the proposed system but I'm not sure of a better one to improve the recycling rates