Plastic Bottle Refund?

mcaul

On recent journeys around the country it seems that mineral bottles make up a huge amount of the waste thrown onto the sides of the road.

In some countries there is a 10c refund on plastic bottles. You simply place the plastic bottles into a reverse vending machine at a supermarket and a cash voucher is given by the machine.

What do you think? and would it work over here?


(Memories of nicking coca cola bottles from the back of Goat Grill and bringing them to Quinnsworth for a 3p refund!!!!)

eirmail

mcaul wrote:

On recent journeys around the country it seems that mineral bottles make up a huge amount of the waste thrown onto the sides of the road.

In some countries there is a 10c refund on plastic bottles. You simply place the plastic bottles into a reverse vending machine at a supermarket and a cash voucher is given by the machine.

What do you think? and would it work over here?


(Memories of nicking coca cola bottles from the back of Goat Grill and bringing them to Quinnsworth for a 3p refund!!!!)

The best system I have seen is the danish one ,where they have no plastic bottles just glass and there is a refund of 10 cent on each one. People who are out and about just leave there bottle on a bench or near a bin and homeless people collect them to earn a few quid. There is no practically no littering as there is always someone picking them up.

People who have drinks at home just wait until they get a load of bottles befroe returning them.

Benster

Off-topic, but not by much...

This post reminded me of a scene I saw in Hoi-An, Vietnam a couple of years ago. I was sitting looking out of the door of a bar at a group of people standing in a yard. They had no uniforms, were all ages and kept arriving with bundles of cardboard, tin cans, plastic water bottles, everything that could be recycled (and obviously worth some small amount). And, as was said above, there was very little litter. It looked like some sort of organised community effort.

I agree that if there was some small compensation for gathering bottles or whatever, more folk would do it here. There'd certainly be a lot of money to be made in some parts of Dublin, I can tell you that!

bonkey

mcaul wrote:

What do you think?

I think its a sad state of affairs when you need a system like this to fight littering.

and would it work over here?

Quite possibly....although you'd have to suffer yet more moaning about nanny-statism, and how punishing people wasn't the right answer, and sure, isn't it the government's fault for not having a PET bin every 5m on every path and road leaving people with no option but to dump them, and how the fine was just another hidden taxation given that you didn't have a PET bin every 5m. on every oath and road and had no option but...well....you get the idea.

SeanW

The Northeastern states in the U.S. have a bottle and can recycling system whereby you pay 5c deposit on any glass or plastic bottles and drink cans you buy, and get refunded for this by bringing the containers back to a recycling section in the store where you feed the containers into the reverse vending machines, in the past you would get cash but the machines issue vouchers today. It does seem to work but the amount has been 5c for decades now, and what with inflation and all I think it may be starting to lose its financial punch.

What I find best about the US system though is that you can actually recycle plastics ... I'm a moderate recycler, but none of the bring banks in Co. Longford, or Westmeath, takes plastics. Neither does our refuse collection take plastics as recyclables - only glass and stuff.

And yes, that is the government's fault.

mcaul

And yes, that is the government's fault.[/QUOTE]


Actually its the local county council that has responsibility for recycling. - Get onto yopur area councillor about this as plastic bottles are easily re-cycled.

Kintarō Hattori

In Poland if you buy a softdrink such as coke, pepsi etc in the store and drink it there and then it's cheaper by a small margin than if you take it away with you. When you're done you hand the glass back to the assistant and they put it aside to be sent back to the bottler.

A small incentive like this perhaps?

luapenak

eirmail wrote:

The best system I have seen is the danish one ,where they have no plastic bottles just glass .

I must disagree with the lack of plastic bottles being a good thing. glass too is heavy and breakable. I don't see why they wouldn't have plastic bottles and take them back too. In much of the places in germany i have been to, the plastic bottles for coca cola etc. are made out of plastic, but are sligthly more solid than here.

sarahirl

think the reason for this (correct me if i'm wrong) is that each store eg tescos pays a certain amount to repak which essentially frees them of any worries about what happens to their packaging. in germany it's the norm (so i've heard) that at the supermarket people cut off all excess packaging and leave it with the supermarket to deal with. in ireland because we have this 'wonderful' repak scheme the recycling of packaging and everything else is dumped on the consumer and hey let's be honest, it's a nuisance and i would rather just bring my plastic bottles back to tescos and tell them to deal with it. green party election issue?

daymobrew

sarahirl wrote:

think the reason for this (correct me if i'm wrong) is that each store eg tescos pays a certain amount to repak which essentially frees them of any worries about what happens to their packaging.

From http://www.repak.ie/how_to_join.html :

Repak assumes responsibility to fund the recovery / recycling of packaging on your behalf and issues each Member with a Certificate of Compliance.

Yes, joining Repak essentially means you do not have to deal with recycling or packaging at your place of business.
While it is obviously a good idea to have a third party deal with recovery/recycling (economies of scale), what is being done is really not good enough. And there is such inconsistency throughout the country. Surely local authorities could get together and make use of economies of scale themselves to provide services.

In Dublin 15 I have my green bin (paper, tetrapack, tins, alu cans). Some places have brown bin (but I use compost bin). For everything else (glass, plastic), I bring it to the nearby Fingal County Council recycling centre. It's great to see that it is almost always busy.