Deposit return scheme (recycling)

There's a way for it to be done, i was thinking and came up with a solution. May not be practical but it does solve this problem/dilemma.

When ordering online, how about removing the deposit for home deliveries (or atleast from those who are housebound and have no way of returning the bottles/cans). NOW here's they can make it work. Every item that has a deposit on it, they can mark through the barcode with a felt tip pen, or scrap off the barcode quickly, like putting something underneath the lable quickly and then pulling slightly upwards so that the barcode is destroyed without the drink being damaged (after scanning it obviously) and then at the end of it all minusing the deposit charges off of the total overall bill.

This way when the person receives their delivery, there is no issue of needing to hand the driver cans/bottles, and no issue of deposits. What this does is make them exempt from the scheme by removing it entirely. No deposit needed, no bringing back of bottles, green bin can still be used, and everyones a winner. Let me know what you think of this idea?

I remember getting a beer delivery from Tesco while I was covid isolating, at the time the competitors 10off50 vouchers could be used in Tesco and on booze. Anyway the driver took the voucher, recorded my order number and I got a partial refund a few days later

No reason that can't work with bottles and cans, write the order number on a bag containing the goods

Wait until the summer and they attract wasps and bees, dregs of soft drinks will too.

It wouldn't really be environmentally friendly to kill pollinators now, would it?

The only way you could really do that is if you had seperate cans without any barcodes just for home delivery purposes, in theory it could work but in practice it's very easy to mix up in store rooms and defeats the purpose of re-turn wanting them popped into the machines

What you could do, is have it so the bin companies can collect the cans/bottles and credit your account accordingly. Would require an upgrade to the bin trucks to allow an extra compartment that can count the cans/bottles accurately and scan a barcode or RFID chip to link it to your account... Not impossible but very very complicated and probably quite an expensive upgrade

Worth a listen......seems like there's a few unintended consequences. But sure look..its working in Germany...

We already have multi chamber bin trucks, the company I use takes compost, glass and recycling/waste depending on the week in 3 compartments of the one truck. I'd say if you really wanted such a scanner and were willing to pay a lot you could get one. Significant slow down and massively increased costs as you say, yes

Dutch system is smart

Californian system you get paid by weight for what you bring to a recycling centre (flaw) after paying a 10c deposit on every container regardless of weight (flaw) but interestingly your bin company can also claim the same amount, in theory this makes bin charges in general lower. But I'm sure there's greed in there somewhere

These bulk machines seems more practical .

I'd seen some people were posing questions to return on their Instagram page, fair questions too, and they've been busy deleting all the comments, all gone today. Must not have liked the points people were raising. Not a good look.

Wondering also about the increased use in large plastic bags. All my recycling went loose into the bin as requested by the bin company. How many extra bags will be used now for storage and transport? And we were so proud of getting rid of plastic single use shopping bags.

There are a significant amout of people, the people who care, who have issues with the scheme - there's a lot on here and on other sites.

These are the people that have recycled for the past couple of decades and who WANT to see these types of things work, yet cannot see how they will.

Tens of millions have been spent on this (by various organisations) and when you do something like that you always have to ask was there a better way.

Ironicilly, the people who don't care and who have never cared about this type of thing - that this very scheme needs to care - don't care enough about the scheme to even complain about it, never mind actively engage with it.

It's not only clickbait it's completely misleading.

The company are saying they would have to hire two more people not fire two people.

Having said that this is a real issue and will mean the loss of some niche products to the Irish market.

Hopefully some practical workaround can be put in place until an EU wide scheme is developed.

If this scheme is because of EU directives (standard lazy excuse at times), then what about the Single Market? Goods coming from other EU countries will be penalised if they don't have return codes, and given the small size of the Irish marlet, it may not be worthwhile to code cans specially for the Irish market.

For large countries like Germany, there would not be much of a problem, simply because of the size of the market, would make return codes worthwhile.

I really dont see how this isnt costing more money.

Extra time in shops to process vouchers.

Extra time in shops writing vouchers if they dont have a machine.

Extra time required to clean up the rejected cans left in shops.

Security guards probably need at some point to prevent vandalism.

Machine break downs requiring staff to spend time taking an ear bashing form people who arrive with their bottles.

There is so much time added on to life in general for both Joe Public and supermarket and shop staff, not to mention producers etc that this is just a massive time sink for everyone. Costs come with time sinks.

Jesus what an ill thought out scheme.