Deposit return scheme (recycling) - Part 2

If people can come on and state that they couldn't use it then why can't I counter it and say that it worked with no issues? That's called balance and it's what's required in debates not just angry people shouting the loudest wins.

As I said if this whole scheme is that much of an annoyance in people's lives then they're very lucky because it really isn't much of a deal at all whether you agree with the scheme or not. Proper 1st World problem that doesn't warrant this much anger.

We deserve to see proof that when these are collected from the machines they aren't mixed up with other recyclable material in the truck. Or when they arrive at the dump they aren'tjust piled up with all the other recyclable materials. So defeating the purpose.

I was at the music festival All Together Now a few years back and they were promoting it as a green environment friendly festival. They had separate bins for recyclable materials.

The bin truck arrived, piled everything in it together with the general waste!!

Show us proof Re-turn...

But I can clearly see I'm getting nowhere

That is solely of your own making.

You never answered my question. I'll try again, it's part of debate.

Well I imagine people with disabilities or mobility issues may disagree with you Gary, are they lucky?

So you are refusing to answer, and pretending to take the moral high ground.

How unique.

Anyway have a good one. 👍️

We have discussed this matter several times.

To date nobody including myself has been able to put a figure on how much of any bin company price increase was due to DRS.

I think we need this information.

If you feel you need hand sanitiser you could bring your own but I don't think it's necessary if your items are clean and empty.

Also as the other poster pointed out you only touch the receipt button.

I have never experienced a foul smell near an RVM.

The landfill smell you recall was caused by rotting waste which wouldn't be coming from an RVM in any case.

I agree with you. I fully expected bin charges to go up, and certainly from my own experience / that I have noticed they have not (for any reason).

On the subject of waste collection - I wonder if at any point Re-turn will engage with the waste collection companies and find a way to pay them (the recycling companies) the deposit on any items they separate out from their recycling streams.

I would love to ask them if they are serious about hitting recovery targets then why have they not done this already.

It would be more meaningful in terms of their actual mandate and environmental impact than enabling charitable donations, for example.

It's baked into the scheme.

Not only will the collection companies lose money on selling high value trash, they will also lose the subsidies they received for collection.

TBF they did highlight this and tried to keep at least cans away from the scheme.

They were ignored.

The loss of income will be passed onto the consumer plus X% obviously because this is Ireland and we don't do regulation.

Re-turn have been citing 'commercial sensitivities' on some very dubious grounds for not releasing figures.

It would be good to get a clearer picture from bin companies, but they may have more grounds to cite commercial sensitivities for such an impact on their operations.

It is reasonable to assume that bin charges will increase as a result of it given that bin companies still have to collect the same bins, given that it is known that the aluminium cans are the most valuable of items collected, and were so valuable they were included in scope of Re-turn primarily for economic reasons.

I have.

I was recycling glass and out of scope cans.

Our civic amenity site always charged for plastic so I didn't take any plastic there

It's hard to know unless you know when they were collected but it's a fair assumption that they are less used.

The issues before DRS seems to have occurred mainly after kerbside collection - i.e. fairly reasonable efforts had been made to separate, but with a low item value sometimes it was less costly to simply incinerate "recycling" waste.

If plastic and aluminium cans are worth 20x as much (value of deposit), then waste collectors suddenly get way better at separation within their plant and they never again divert plastic or aluminium to incineration.

I don't think they necessarily need to have separate collection systems. I am also not proposing that they need to refund the value to the householder, so there is no complexity there either [the consumer choice is return it yourself, or forfeit the deposit - this is as it is now, no change]. Waste collectors simply become super-incentivised to recover PET and aluminium from what they already collect.

Its a zero-cash-cost change (as the deposits are already there in re-turn), it adds to re-turns collection stats (as in the mission of DRS) & it some way protects waste collectors from revenue loss / consumers from price increases.

Again I ask - why has re-turn not done this already?

Re-turn are taking people's money, they are taking the items we purchased and returned. Their operations are based on an expected 10% retention rate. All of under via a state mandated monopoly. It is last resort semantics to try to claim otherwise.

If Re-turn turn around and look for increase in the deposits, given that it is a state mandated amount, then the onus on them to produce the figures to justify that request is far greater. Given that they are funded via a state mandated amount and a state mandated monopoly, they need to be fully transparent with where the money is going - is it being used to fund recycling, it is being used to reduce producer fees etc

It would be like RTE looking for a licence fee increase without providing any details why.

Re-turn need to be justifying from the get go and on an annual basis the deposit levels being charged and how it is utilised.

Whereas bin companies are a service provider operating in a competitive market.

If you were discussing any price increase by such a provider, outside Re-turn - broadband, energy whatever, have you ever looked for: "Any company proposing to take extra should be able to break down the figures and justify it." ?

It would be rather telling if it only occurs to you in the context of something connected to Re-turn.

In an ideal world they should do so, but I would re-iterate that reporting transparency ask of Re-turn is legitimately greater.

Apologies if discussed previously. Is it possible to build up these recycle receipts and use a large number of them when doing a weekly shop?

If we cannot get any figures from ReTurn about items collected and recycled or director's remuneration from a quango set up by the gov't which is a monopoly and has NO competition, do you seriously expect a waste company to tell you the exact reason with figures pre and post price increase what this new system's practice is causing a ?% increase?????????????

Nobody washes containers! My local council recycling has dinners,bbq trays,vegetables and gardening waste in the bottle,can banks.