A charity donation or a refund to card? I'd be in favour of both especially the latter. There's no need for this process to have more than one step in my view.
Re-Turn Plastic Bottles
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Sorry, should have been clearer - charity donation. Perhaps it was dropped in the "consultation", I see many mentions of it in the media re: the initial announcement of the scheme.
Options on return machines will include choosing to spend the money in the shop, receiving cash, or donating to charity.
Details of bottle and can deposit scheme announced
Details of a new scheme to encourage people to recycle their drinks bottles and cans have been announced.
T McGibney
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They know that many of the vouchers will never be reclaimed. This is built in as part of the stores' margin.
Again, why won't the scheme here address that when it has in so many other countries?
Not everyone has a green bin, let alone use them correctly. If there was high levels of recycling, there's no way this scheme would ever have been considered. Even many of those who feel we're not doing enough to encourage recycling aren't keen on the inconvenience. There's no easy win for a government here.
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Does that not go to fund Re-Turn itself? The retailers remit the deposits to Re-Turn who reimburse participating retailers the deposit along with a handling fee per item.
I'd agree in it's current form many vouchers will not be reclaimed. Why should any store be making a margin on this scheme?
T McGibney
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They didn't buy and won't be powering and maintaining all those expensive machines for the good of their health.
In those other countries, how many of the places such as small convenience stores where people are likely to be buying them on the go offer takeback?
We do not have the same scheme in practice as in other countries.
IF we have different outcomes to other countries, we should look at what is actually different here.
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Most are similar to here really using reverse vending machines. Look up Germany on Google Maps for example and look for Pfand collection points. It's not like we looked at all the places hitting 98% recycling raters and decided to do something different!
It's similar to here from what I've seen, with queues for the bigger vending machines at times (some of these shred PET on site).
It seems like the spec for the machines here specifically calls out no shredding, compacts instead.
All RVM’s must provide the container material in a co-mingled format for collection. Shredded or fragmenting of this material must not occur. An impalement rate of 0.1% is acceptable whereby the co-mingled material cannot be separated and further processed into either PET or Aluminium/Steel bales. This requires a single compactor capable of effectively compacting each type of material. If this is not possible, two material specific compactors will be required. 3.13 Volume Reduction & Flattening Compactors must reduce the volume of a PET Beverage container by at least 55% and the volume of anAluminium/Steel Container by at least 75%. RVMs must maintain this level over the duration of its life. The compactor should destroy the barcode and all compacted containers should be rejected when attempted to be returned again.
The shredders tend to be big machines, limiting the options likely makes introduction here easier.
Shops get a handling fee of about 1.2c per container. Adds up fairly quickly once volume comes.
Its a near replica of the Danish system.
Just saw that the machine has similar technology to self service checkouts - as well as the barcode being read, it weighs the container. If the weight doesn't conform to the registered weight of the empty container, it gets rejected. This obviously helps stop counterfeit barcodes being deposited.
They are being asked to change the weight parameters a little to allow for a small amount of liquid.
T McGibney
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I read somewhere that the machines cost circa €10k each.
On the above figures, that would mean each machine would need to process 833,000 bottles in order to achieve payback.
And that's before counting tax, VAT, power and maintenance costs.
Those economics, on their own, don't remotely stack up.
I'm with Panda and we were told that we can put all packaging material in our green bin both recyclable and non recyclable
and that they will sort it out back at depo, so yes I'm sure they the "employees" will keep an eye out for any returnable items
Only issue I see is everything will be compacted and/or damaged in the back of the truck and probably won't be accepted by the Re-Turn machines But at the very least they're been recycled by Panda
2.2c for vending machines or 2.6c for manual collection.
Yep, keep them in the wallet/purse for long enough and the print disappears.
As far as I know there is no deposit on 5 litre containers- so there is no manual handling there.
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