The new recycling system

The thing about fraud in a scheme like this, committing the fraud still results in product being recycled so it's not a terrible thing

Excellent post.

One of the key points you make relates to changing behaviours.

In relation to plastic bottles, we don't need as much plastic bottle usage as we currently have. There are too many households who can't be bothered to replace the filter on their expensive eletricity-guggling American fridge and fill reusable flasks for water. Instead, they buy loads of plastic bottled water. If only 20% of those started buying less water bottles, this scheme would be a great success.

What happens if you get a voucher for €9 from the machine but only use the voucher to spend €6 in the supermarket that day, will the cashier be able to issue you with a new voucher for the €3 or will it be €3 in cash you get back?

This is wild speculation on my part, but i'd assume based on my experience with other vouchers they'd scam you out of the €3 change or claim they're donating it to charity on your behalf.

If i was you, just to be safe it's better to cash the voucher and then buy what you want with the cash, that way there's no risk of them pocketing the change. Cushty cushty.

Will seldom happen I imagine.

Vouchers are designed to make you consume more, it's the main reason the large retailers are fully in on this.

It forces people into the larger stores.

Genius really, not very environmental though.

You go in with your 60 cent voucher, buy a bar of chocolate for 1.20 and chuck the wrapper in the general waste bin or on the street if you are that way inclined, all happy because you helped the environment.

The advice on here is to come back later, but for some reason that isn't considered an extra journey. 👍️

Au contraire L1011, au contraire i have'nt made stuff up. I have experience with spending vouchers and other money off schemes, and normally when spending a store issued voucher they don't give change. They can only give money off up to the value written on the voucher off of purchase. So if you're buying something with a voucher its wiser to make sure to spend all of the voucher so that way you get your money's worth so to speak. Otherwise they keep it and don't give you change. It's in their terms and conditions like, how can you say i'm making this up?

You know it makes sense

Because this is neither a store voucher nor a money off scheme; and because you outright said it was wild speculation

All thread long you have just made stuff up to fill in for stuff you didn't know or understand.

You still have an exceptionally poor understanding of the scheme to the point you claim it's a scam.

That's a lot of bottles and cans, the last time I used one in Germany I got rid of 24 cans in less than 30 seconds, if your family is drinking 480 cans or bottles a week you have bigger problems

Unlikely... I'm guessing they advised you to instead do your shopping (and recycling) at a different time and you got confused again

Yes if a store has one of them I will be going there, the machines I have seen so far don't appear up to much given the size of the actual processing part.

What machines? All of them on the list of approved suppliers are all capable of processing around that amount per minute.

30 seconds is a wild suggestion, where exactly have you seen them?

On YouTube, the Return website doesn't show any examples oddly just a series of Powerpoint slides with cartoons for people.

You're basing your idea of how long they take on what you think the speed is from looking at static cartoons?

How?

i'm not sure where either of you are based, but your comments about having so many cans/bottles but being hassled with the bother of bringing them back has inspired me to come up with a creative solution that involves myself (or any other that wishes to do this) to go around some estates, collecting the cans and bottles that people are unable (or unwilling) to bring back themselves for the deposit, and in return i could give like 3-5 cent each or something. And go around to all of the houses who agreed, arranged this before hand.

That way it is less bad fumes into the environment and i'm doing them all a favor and everyone gets to be a winner, and i collect the deposit money.

How does this sound?

And yes L1011 i still believe the general feb 1st scheme is a scam. its unfair and is only being done to drive up unit numbers to show the EU. i believe thats been made quite clear by now as others have pointed out. I'm more interested in the money side of things and in helping people who are being inconvenienced by this decision.

Hi Rigor Mortis, thanks for your comments. Wish I could quote you point by point, but not sure I can so hope below is OK in response.

Re: item 1 - My proposal had a separate chipped bin, and a separate collection for these items. I refer to them as 'credit-able' items, which I had outlined were plastic bottles and cans. I further said that any contamination in these seperate bins would forfeit the credit. I genuinely don't know how you could have reached your first conclusions there. Just to say for clarity, its not RFID based either.

On the second point, I think AI based solutions can actually be better than RVMs for this type of thing, but I appreciate you may have reservations, as I am sure others would too. The solution I set out does not require special barcodes - because AI has capabilty to tell if an item it is plastic or aluminium, even if crushed; secondly AI could be trained to detect contamination, whereas RVMs will have a limited ability to do that. You said there would be no proof - I did mention the point about proof / evidence - images are retained and could be reviewed. FWIW I think AI will feature in the future anyway - realistically as long as we still have domestic collection there is no other way to combat contamination.

On your third point, I am not sure we are in disagreement. My scheme is fully compatible with DRS, my very first point stated there would be a levy on every plastic bottle and can. It would be less expensive to operate as it won't need thousands of retail 'partners', special bar codes, or central collection contracts, but the idea would be the same - a self financing scheme.

On the first final point, I still say taking volume from the waste management business is not going to help that sector grow, or improve. If as you mention you are concerned about the competency of that sector now, you must be more concerned about them in the future when 1.2bn items are taken from scope. I certainly am. As I mentioned in another post, there are recycling issues beyond plastic bottles and cans that we will need to solve in the near future, so I feel the sector is important.

Re: rented accommodation, etc - yes, thats definitely a point. I did mention in other posts that while re-turn inconveniences everyone, my scheme only inconveniences some, maybe the answer is both solutions co-exist.