The new recycling system

i agree its not nice, but its also not nice for one to have the mat pulled from under them when they have their hopes up thinking they're gonna redeem a bunch of cans only for none of them to go through and all get rejected. at that point bringing them back home was unplanned and unexpected so i can imagine why people just leave them there. Out of frustration or inconvenience, they didn't wanna add more inconvenience to their day after already being inconvenienced enough by this prior.

i believe its only littering when its going all over the place and dirty and messy. if its neat and standing upright in a bag beside the machine, and not in anyones way then that sort of okay. its not nice to see it just being left there because its an eyesore and it would send the wrong message to other people seeing others get away with it and then others adding more to it. the staff should be regularly clearing the area.

if someone trips on a can/bottle trying to enter the store, or if these bags pose some other sort of hazard, guess who gets sued?

I mentioned that I brought about 15 bottles and cans of various sizes to my local reverse vending machine. None had the return logo even though some were bought after 1st Feb at a higher price than the days before so can only assume they had the extra charge applied. I gave up after about ten items as it was becoming futile. Bringing them back home was unplanned and unexpected but leaving the items there was absolutely out of the question. They were still my items until successfully entered into the vending machine and my token receipt paper slip is in my hand. Leaving them there is plain and simple littering and I'd be a massively selfish cnut if I had left them here. (Exact same applies at a glass bottle bank in terms of leaving the bottles there if the bank is full)

As the recycling bin at the house was full to the brim in the house that I part time live in, in Trim, I ended up bringing them to my own house in Longford where I crushed up all the items and put them in my own recycling bin there. Yes, it was an inconvenience but no, I won't leave my litter to be someone else's problem because I'm not a horrible littering ba$tard like that.

Your personal belief of what littering is just that, your personal belief. It's similar to someone who drives over the speed limit because it's his/her belief that the speed limit is too low.........regardless of his/her belief, the person is still speeding.

Littering:

Wikipedia: "Litter consists of waste products that have been discarded incorrectly, without consent, at an unsuitable location. "

Britannica Dictionary: "things that have been thrown away and that are lying on the ground in a public place"

Cambridge Dictionary: "the act of dropping rubbish on the ground in public places"

It's already been mentioned about what constitutes a private and a public place but to keep things as simple as possible for everyone, if a place is open to the public, consider it a public place. If it's not open to the public......an office, your home, a prison, etc, it's a private place.

Not 100% of a prison being a private place but I can only assume you have to be invited and granted permission to enter a prison.

What further inconvenience? Throw them back in the car and throw empty the bag directly in the green bin. The level of effort is incredibly small.

You may believe its not littering. However, it is. Nor are things in an orderly manner, they're spilling onto the ground.

There's a serious lack of ownership by those running this scheme. The members of the public have done the responsible thing by bringing the items to the RVM. The RVM should be running, or there should be an alternative provided when it is not. Not everybody comes to the store by car eg maybe on foot or is able to bring the items back and complete their planned shopping.

That is on the supermarket. Re-turn have made it their problem by using "the stick" to direct towards bringing the items to a machine and not their own green bin.

Re-turn are the ones who created a job for themselves with this scheme. And generated revenue for the supermarkets with their 2.2c cut. It is their responsibility and they are remunerated for it.

if it were me, i'd rather bring my bag home after trying atleast 1 or 2 other RVM's. But cans that are ineligible also have money/scrap value. i seen 3 bags the other day left on the ground and one spilled over, so i took them home, flattened them, and then dropped them into a scrapyard on my way to work the next day, thinking i would get a couple of cents which i was gonna donate somewhere as a joke. instead to my surprise i got €4.20! lunch was free!

its not something i would do on my day off, but if i had more free time when passing to work, i'd gladly take any giant bags of unwanted cans i see left by the RVM's. i'm doing the store a favor

When the RVM isn't working the responsibility as far as I'm concerned is on Re-turn and the supermarkets as their remunerated agents. They should provide an alternative.

As far as I'm concerned, it is not littering in that scenario if bottles are tidily left at the RVM.

Remember this scheme was supposed to reduce littering!

So yeah, leaving the items at an RVM isn't littering. Or else, wow the scheme is encouraging littering.

My post made it clear I am talking about this scenario: When the RVM isn't working the responsibility as far as I'm concerned is on Re-turn and the supermarkets as their remunerated agents. As far as I'm concerned, it is not littering in that scenario if bottles are tidily left at the RVM.

I don't know if the RVM was working or not in that particular photo.

It's madness expecting people to schlep the stuff to an RVM, and as seems now common, the RVM out of action, expecting 100% of them to schlep the stuff back again. If I bring the appropriate items (not really "rubbish", they have a monetary value) to the designated return point the items are then the responsibility of the scheme to whom I have paid a deposit. And it is madness to expect more than that from ordinary punters.

I do agree on having extra bins for cans and bottles and it is another way to recycle them if people are dumping them there.

Somewhere deep in the terms of the conditions of the Return scheme or maybe Freeman DRS law, it appears to some that you are allowed to waltz up to any machine and dump all your non-eligible containers on the floor and then state it's the stores problem not theirs.

Toys out of pram.

Or in this case cans out of boot.

I observed a man having a temper tantrum at a local Lidl this morning as he had 2 black bin liners full of old bottles and cans, he got very aggressive with a lady who was waiting to use the machine, she tried to explain that there needed to be a special barcode etc but he got up in her face saying he was not a thief..

I can only assume this is happening the length and breath of the country.

I wasn't talking about a specific machine, retail have an obligation to keep machines working.

In that scenario Lidl are obligated to clean up that mess, doesn't matter what series of events led to that mess being created. They are liable. Also just because a machine has power going to it, doesn't mean it is functioning, it could well be full or out of paper.

The hope would be it would be added to Lidl's recycling, which is only fair considering there are one of the few main benefactors of this scheme. People are penalised financially for not bringing their trash to one of those machines. The majority of that would already be in a bin if it wasn't for this scheme.

The alternative is it gets thrown in the car park or my some miracle if someone was actually able to find a public general dustbin in there.

There is no system in place to deal with rejects going forward. So the problem is here to stay.

This was pointed out several times to the purists but apparently it was a fantasy scenario that could not happen.

But it is littering. There is no opinion about it.

Its week 3, are you incapable or waiting a sufficient period of time before drawing a conclusion? If you install 1800 brand new machines, there are going to be issues at the start. If the problems are still there next year, then there's a fundametal flaw with the system.

I have had zero issues with RVMs. Every shop I have visited with an RVM have had them operational. Anecdotal evidence is just that. People will log on and complain. People won't log on and say "i had no issue".

I don't agree with leaving cans and bottles behind me but I wouldn't shop in a store where staff leave rubbish like that either. Possibly unfair, given we don't know how long those items were there.

I worked in retail many moons ago and we'd regularly clean up outside the store. Yes we shouldn't have had to but we weren't leaving customers thinking the place was a kip either.

If you install 1800 brand new machines, there are going to be issues at the start

On brand new machines?

Would the issues not be more acute after a prolonged period of use?

You know like every other single machine on the planet.