In respect to "plastic recycling" since stats show 71% is being incinerated so one may ask why the feck bother?
I think @Ray Palmer used a double negative there 'extremely unlikely / will not', i.e. extremely likely to increase.
Recycling was trending to increase anyway, and just because Re-turn may increase recycling at a faster rate does not necessarily prove or validate that re-turn was the only possible way to do that. I would advocate that we need to de-focus on recycling and focus on reuse, so I am not all that excited by an increase in recycling.
If anything, the adoption of these schemes across EU means that plastic will continue to be the preferred container type across Europe - all that investment in plastic production, bottling, recycling and not to mention the billions invested in RVMs across the continent is not going to be unwound too easily - plastic is going to be disposable-after-one-use for 100s of billions of items p.a. for another couple of decades.
From my perspective I have changed behavior so that I can completely avoid re-turn. This is overall for the better: I have reduced my single use plastic / aluminium to a minimum.
As I personally "decrease" recycling at my home; unfortunately I can't escape the fact that anything I do is going to cost me more than before in collection charges.
There are very few, I might even say that there are no incentives for consumers to do the right thing.
I am trying to get a straight answer from you. You said recycling will not increase. Can you clarify the point you were trying to make?
What does your question mean? I am saying recycling will most likely increase they said things would be the same time will tell
Recycling will not increase?
Well that will be proven one way or the other but extremely unlikely recycling will not increase as a result
i think his point is: he means if return uses the same figures/numbers/yields the same results as, then re-pak already achieved what re-turn did, but without ever having to use RVM's to achieve the same result
Don't understand your logic at all. The 60% will improve and the recovery rate staying the same would mean more is recycled.
The report from 2022 said we were already doing 60% returned, with 90% recovery. If ReTurn use the same figures, then RePak is already a success without turning a single RVM on..
About a decade ago I lived abroad in a country that had a deposit return scheme, but also household waste was paid through normal taxation. In Ireland it really is a joke. Some places, you buy a bin tag in the shop which you put on your bin, other places, they just send you an invoice once a year. When the bin tag blows away in a gale, your bin doesnt get collected. So, you have to wait another week or two with rotting rubbish. And then they wonder why fly tipping is such an issue here.
If the green party took their head out of the clouds, they could make real major improvements to this country, and that should start with waste collection and disposal.
Pay as you earn? i said to make it tax free, certain jobs that benefit from the country are exempt from taxes, such as irish art or some things that contribute to the country. Recycling cans and picking up cans from the street can be seen as helping keep the streets cleaner. there is no prsi or universal social charge needed, no implications for paye, prsi, or usc at all. Bring cans back for cash is not a "job by the state", getting paid by the state for returning empties does'nt mean you're being employed by them.
as for the rest of what you said, no it would not defeat the point of this, instead it would be rewarding people for the recycling as a reward based incentive as opposed to a punishment based one where people feel forced into it. infact some people would go out of their way and be even more likely to go out looking for cans to bring as a result of it.
look at the end of the day people are still gonna waste cans regardless, i think it should be more fair to those who do partake in trying to help keep the environment cleaner while also at the same time rewarding them and not punishing housebound people.
The scheme as it already is punishing people who have already been recycling at home and does'nt really do much to punish the people causing the problem who throw cans out car windows. if anything its letting them get away with it and infact profitting from that problem
Yes tax implications, PAYE, PRSI, USC because you'd now be employed to do a job by the state. If you allowed wages to be earned tax free for this on environmental grounds you'd also have to allow it for anybody working for the current bin companies, anybody involved in waste water treatment, electric car manufacturing, bicycle sales, bus/train drivers and a long list of others whose employment benefits the economy
Dropping the price at the shops by the deposit amount would defeat the point of the exercise as now you'd be paying the same as before so most people would probably think why to bother returning the empties?
There was always a 4 month transition period. If your store charged and then stopped charging that is your store's responsibility and mistake.
I do think it strange you work in a retail store and are complaining you have to bring product back to a store and have no place to store them. Seems like the easy solution is to bring them into work in small batches
tax implications? hardly is someone gonna get hit with income tax for recycling a few cans. infact because its doing something for the country it should be tax exempt. it should be a persons inalienable right to recycle a can, pick up cans from the street and get paid for those cans.
either that, or else force shops to lower the price of their item by law, so that the deposit is covered as already being included in the price and makes no difference to the consumer aka paying the same amount as they normally would
Problem there is you're then paying somebody to do that so you have potential tax implications and it turns into a huge mess. Much easier and cheaper to place a refundable deposit
thats a nice idea and its also pro-green/enviromentally friendly, but it would be nice if we were actually getting paid to do all that instead of just being handed back are own money. i'm sure if they put their hand in their pocket the would be much more incentive and enthusiam for people to do this, and would also help them greatly reach their target goals faster.
A solution for your problem of storing the recycling in a cramped house, when you finish with the contents put the empty (rinsed if desired) container back in the fridge, or wherever you store the drink before drinking it. Then bring it with you then the next time you go shopping so no car required either 👍
To be fair the transition period has been communicated to retailers and producers from day 1, but if the producers/retailers weren't engaging with DRS then they mightn't have known. It was hard to get initial information to join if you weren't part of a trade organisation. I have been signed up with them for around a year now, and at that point had already missed all the important consultation stages. It was extremely frustrating.
not a fan of this at all in a personal capacity since i already recycle & dont drive, also live in a fairly cramped house so dont really have space to collect loads of bottles to make it more worth while.
but also been a pain in the whole in work since i work retail. impression given was this whole thing was kicking off on feb 1st, had been telling customer about it in preparation, lots already knew but others didn't. then of course the day comes, we dont have our machines (apparently will take a few weeks to get them) and re-turn anounce that there's now a 4 month transition period. some of a cans/bottles have the deposit charge, some had it and then it disappeared. none of them have the logo. tho apparently in contradition to what it says online till now , everyones been told it doesn't actually need the logo, but the special barcode. so people are buying mutiple drinks not knowing which has deposit & which doesn't, unless they check the app or their receipt. absolute disaster
i'm nitpicking? who did i nit-pick?
i responded to a person who asked a question about re-turn meeting the percentage targets numbers goal as defined by re-turn, nice to know you entirely ignored the part saying "not saying this will happen, just making a point, bear with me" part of what i said, when talking about landfils as an example of regardless of where it actually ends up, its still a stat. then you accuse me of trying to find fault and nitpicking. lol wut?
no idea what your argument being made is here, its quite unclear. Perhaps you responded to the wrong post? it feels aimed towards someone else.
If currently we get 60% returned via re-pack with a 95% percent recovery from that it bodes well. If we get the 90% return rate and use the current recovery systems hitting 95% it is likely we will get the same. I don't understand why you think with per-separated waste they will suddenly start putting it in landfill. Re-turn understand the goal so they are going to get it to recycling.
It really seems like you are nitpicking with no reason to find a fault. We will have to wait and see and you could be right in the end but it seems doubtful
the 90% goal only related to the percentage of items that have been returned to the rvm, compared with the data of deposits issued on receipts initially before product is consumed (point-of-sale).
i agree, these stats would need scrutiny for anyone who genuinly cares about what becomes of their recyccleables. As for re-turn their main priority is geting the numbers up and units returned to the machine. They can then sell our scrap metal and plastic from the machine, to recyclers in other counteries that will turn it into raw material, or to anyone who buys it from them and then decides to put it in a landfil (not saying this will happen, just making a point, bear with me) but aslong as the RVM data for this sceme shows a recycling rate of 90% then all is good, regardless of where the produce from the machine actually goes to, and regardless of what becomes of it.
Not looking to have a fight about the data (?), I appreciate its not your area too, thank you for responding.
I think, in all good faith, numbers that will be reported need scrutiny.
If the EU mean for us to recover 90% of all plastic packaging by 2029, re-turn could well exceed 90% collection of DRS items and we would still miss the overall target. (I didn't think the EU meant 'only DRS' items, but I could be wrong?).
My main objection to re-turn is that it has been established to help with recovery of certain, cherry picked if you will, items only. Post Re-turns set up, we still have to deal with, at some point soon, the mixed waste going in our green bins. I have always felt, and stated here many times, that instead of creating re-turn, we should have invested in ways to improve household collection for all recyclable materials: better separation, less contamination, better downstream segregation, more regulation, etc, etc.
X% of all plastics, but also X% of all other materials should be the goal. In many ways, if all re-turn are going to tell is the % of deposits that are reclaimed, that particular statistic is not important. Its like reporting how the one hole in the bucket we've bothered to patch up now leaks less, while you ignore the leaks from every other hole.
No idea as it is nothing to do with software implementation so I just know that is the goal like the rest of the public. I also really don't think it needs a whole lot of scrutiny to to try and find fault with the idea or how the data is collected. That to me is just wanting to fight about the idea of the scheme rather than to be informed
@Ray Palmer do you know if there is any clear definition of the 90%? It has been mentioned quite a bit on here, and in the press, but like anything it left open to interpretation.
I appreciate you may not know, maybe others do - but, as its core KPI, even its raison d'etre, I wonder how the 90% has been defined within re-turn.
Is it for example, simply calculated as 'No. deposits redeemed in period'/ 'No. deposits charged in period'? i.e. that the goal is minimum 90% of deposits returned come 2029. (Presumably re-turn have good enough dataset to be able to breakout that deposit return rate for PET and Aluminium separately, maybe by container size, producer, region, etc?)
If its just as above, then "90%" only means 'just DRS items' - it does not mean 'all PET plastic', or 'all aluminium' since not all PET packaging or aluminium packaging is a) DRS or b) redeemable.
Do we still have to report overall plastic and aluminium recycle rates, like we do today from repak (even based on weight estimates)? this may be beyond re-turn, but are there no increasing recovery targets set for them?
It will go higher with the DRS. The goal is 90% recycle rate. Kippy is giving out about how they got the figures you quoted
I have got the deposit back on older cans no problem the past couple of days that were well before this stupid scheme was introduced. I had Coors beer cans I bought 6 months ago and I found a can of White Claw at the back of a drinks cupboard 2 years out of date and got refunded at the machine. From what I can see the barcode is the same on products no matter how old the product is so should be accepted. I could be totally wrong and just got lucky! Free money.
I suppose the best way of knowing for sure is go try it with an old can or bottle.
The drinks section is nearly back stocked in my local Tesco. You can't get single 2L bottles of water though for the past few weeks. You can only get a 6 pack. Too heavy to carry home without a car. Hopefully they get them back in soon.
You are correct that thermal paper lined with BPA shouldn't be recycled or composted but not all thermal paper is BPA lined. Whether these machines use BPA lined paper or not is hard to tell
same exact thing happened to me too! but with bottles (same was being done with cans too). Posted this in the other thread about 8 days ago "sadly there's nothing to stop them doing that, as a "franchise" with a deli counter in my area has already done this on non-returnable bottles. Upped them all by 25c despite not being able to get a deposit back on them. Really taking advantage like. No Price commissioner in ireland sadly."
and then almost 2 days later in the same thread as mentioned above, this: Today i seen it again, all the bottles gone up 25c. i asked a worker about it and they said to me "it's in preparation of the new bottle recycling scheme, that thing you seen at the doorway when you walked in" i asked "yeah but howcome the extra is being charged before it goes live? these bottles don't have the return logo on them and will be rejected by the machine" he says back to me "don't worry we'll have another bin brought out beside it for rejected bottled" i said "yeah but you're still charging extra for bottles that won't be accepted" he then was saying something about shelves and another worker cut him off mid sentance, did'nt get to hear what he was trying to respond with, all i could here was "AH HERE DON'T YOU BE TELLING HIM ABOUT THAT, THAT THING'S NOT LIVE YET", he tried to say something else to the other worker and was talked over quickly with "if he wants to know he can wait, don't be saying nothing about our prices, and don't be going and tell'in him anything"
keep in mind this was all BEFORE February 1st, at the moment they still have no logo stock, yesterday (feb 5th) i seen them get a bunch of non-logo stock from a delivery truck. They're meant to be getting rid of it, not getting more of it. Their machine has been turned off since day 1, and none of their cans give deposits back in other RVMs as they are non-scheme related stock (tried returning their bottles and cans to other rvms such as tesco, lidl, aldi. but not recognized by either of these. its taking the piss. i've attempted to report them but sadly no luck thusfar, still waiting for a response. i'll try again tomorrow
