Deposit return scheme (recycling)

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