Partygoers who crush cans barred for life😂
The cans as a sort of payment for the clean up ? 🙂
The host may just have to charge an entrance fee for those bringing bottles as more inconvenient to dispose of and no chance of earning a deposit on return😂
They will have to balance the inconvenience of trying to shepherd their cans all night and get them home later with the price of bottles.
At 15c per can which they will almost certainly lose the glass bottles might look attractive.
Also I have noticed that since MUP when beer is on offer there is often no price difference between bottles and cans which would make the bottles an outright winner.
Depends which will be cheaper. €/ml the partygoer's kpi
I wonder will the smart party goers switch to glass bottles ?
Will the deposit return points be 24hrs or same as the shop opening hours?
House parties will be changed forever, the clean-up will become a whole lot easier as people will be dragging home their empties.
Producers have to upload their new products with barcodes 6 weeks before launching in the market, and will continue to supply their own barcodes as they do now. Re-Turn does not supply the barcodes. Producers have been uploading data since August in preparation for this.
The administrative burden on small businesses is large though, I agree with you there! So much reporting to be done.
I presume all machines will be internet connected so updates are not a problem.
It's about time producers of waste were required to take responsibility for what they put on the market.
Repak is established under legislation but is also not a Government body. It is a member organisation, which is not for profit and exists to promote recycling and manage packaging compliance. Repak was contracted by Deposit Return Ireland, trading as Re-turn, to manage the operations of the DRS scheme.
Some machines have an additional opening for depositing rejected items. I've seen one such in one of my local Aldi stores.
In other cases, a regular bin will be located in proximity for disposal of rejects.
We're not reinventing the wheel here, what's being rolled out is exactly in line with what operates in many other countries.
On the whole, the scheme is not going to be accepting containers that don't meet the requirements.
There is some scope for the RVMs to accept "non-scheme containers" (and not pay back a deposit), but this has to be agreed with the operators on an individual basis, and they will still go though the weight/visual inspection against the Container Masterfile.
RVMs may accept non-scheme containers if agreed in advance with DRSI. Approved non-scheme containers will be added to the Container Masterfile. Non-scheme containers will automatically carry a deposit of €0.00. (Source: he RVM spec document).
Here's a selection of relevant quotes from the RVM spec document (I linked to previously) regarding rejecting containers:
Maybe smart establishments will put a general recycling bin nearby if it becomes an issue, but ultimately, it's up to individuals to dispose of their own waste legally and responsibly.
When I looked them up before I saw they shared an address with Repak which I thought was a quango so good to hear they're not, hopefully that helps. Still it's an extra step in the development of a product, we'll see if it has an impact.
Actually, Re-Turn is expressly NOT a Government organisation. The legalisation (https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2021/si/599/made/en/print) required the drinks producers to establish and operate the scheme themselves:
4. (1) Producers shall establish a Deposit Return Scheme (hereafter “the scheme”) to operate in respect of in-scope bottles, in-scope containers and in-scope products.
Re-Turn is what they came up with.
The general targets and scope are in the legislation, but the nuts-and-bolts of how it is operated (such as how the containers are identified by the machines) were defined by the industry itself.
Are you sure on that? Handy way of getting rid of unwanted containers, just shove them into the RVM
I see that now thanks, I didn't realize Adobe Reader only showed me the first few pages last night.
I see this requirement to have the details of each container in the master container file being a nightmare in practice. Every machine from every manufacturer needs an up to date file or else newly released products are going to be rejected. Each drink vendor in the market is going to have to supply the details of what their container looks like to each machine manufacturer, and apply for and receive a unique barcode from what is essentially a government organisation before they can release their product, and the machine manufacturers are going to have to roll out updates in a timely fashion. This is no easy feat, and repac being at the centre is this isn't going to speed up matters. It's another cost and administrative burden to small drinks producers which will stifle innovation, they'll all revert to glass or use a standard shaped container, which hopefully can use the same barcode across products from different suppliers.
Did you read the PDF I link to in my post? That’s the official requirements document for the RVMs, and it contains everything I mentioned about container validation.
I guess the simple solution would be to equip delivery drivers for the supermarkets with with a scanner.
What about people with mobility issues? Or people with no transport? Such as myself.....I crush all my cans and plastic bottles and put them in my recycling bin. I pay for the service of course same as everyone else.
But now I have to pay extra for my cans and bottles, and I've no hope of transporting them all and getting my deposits back! Unless I quickly drink my can of fizz/bottle of water and throw it back in then it's just costing me extra and that's it! Or I could fill my bin bag, throw it over my shoulder, and go on my mobility scooter to drop them off, I think it's a bit unfair really.
I assume that , on error, the machine still accepts the bottle/can and you just dont get the credit, otherwise everyone of these places is going to look like a kip in about 2 days as there is no way people are bringing failures back home with them.
It's that from some official documentation or your own interpretation? I can only see a general statement on validating the container and the only specific stuff on being able to scan the barcode.
Seems like overkill on validating a specific container. The more stringent you make a scheme like this the more user unfriendly you make it which will impact its effectiveness. I see nothing to suggest that fraudulent barcodes on invalid containers is a big problem in other countries, and since other countries are being held up as the gold standard for this it would be weird if we're inventing our own problems to solve.
A nightmare from a consumer understanding perspective. Consumers find it hard to work out why the difference would be between products that ostensibly look the same. I've spent a fair bit of time on this and I dont think any scheme is working on bottle weight.
Also worth noting, a weight barrier could in theory bias against carbonated drinks as still drinks do not require the same bottle density. The thinner the bottle the greater the chance of carbonation loss more quickly.
Yeah, it’ll be a separate deposit on each can, so you’ll have to mind them.
I assume the receipts will have a unique barcode each, so they become invalid when used, like Dunnes vouchers. Also, they’ll only be valid in the shop that hosts the RVM. It’s possible that (for example) Tesco ones will use a different identification system and look completely different to Aldi ones.
Seems like it would just be easier to break into the machine and steal the blank vouchers :)
Well I presume the barcode would take care of variable weight of the bottle?
The machines will weigh the containers, but it’s to check that they’re empty.
Edit: Here's the specification document for the RVMs https://re-turn.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DRSI_CLG_RVM_Specification_V1.0.pdf
They will do
The machines must be able to validate that the container as identified by the barcode is indeed that container. They must also be ablate identify if the container is attached to something, or is travelling out of the machine, and therefore reject the transaction. Think of Top Cat's coin on a string.
Most producers are moving to lightweight to as great a degree as they can. For cost and emissions reporting reasons.
It would be a nightmare trying to vary the deposit based on weight. The main reason for the variable deposit was to reduce the impact on multipack sales. The original concept was for a single deposit at about 20c.
The first point I think they could counter by weight, a crushed anything weighs the same as the uncrushed version, but yeah I guess security would be a valid problem.
Its going to have to drive some change as some bottles (LIDL spring water for example) are effectively designed to crush at home when empty, they barely hold up under their own weight the plastic is so thin. Will there a different rate for thin 2L vs thick 2L? Seems like it should be based on the amount of plastic involved rather than the containers volume?
Joe Duffy has already run a few assasination pieces on it. Being Joe, they were full of more inaccuracies than your average 5 year old.
Apologies, i misread your signature as your post.
I don’t know, but I do know that the German system, for example, is quite different to ours, in that they have some specific reusable plastic bottles on the market that need to be taken in and stored fully intact in order to be refilled (multiple times), as well as one-use recyclable containers. So their requirements for intake, processing and storage will be quite different to the Irish system.
