have you been livng under a rock the past decade? there's a massive housing crisis in ireland & it's very common for houses to be crowded with adult renters. i live in a 4 bedroom house with 5 adults (dining room is also a bedroom). it really shoulnd't be that hard to grasp that extra storage space often isn't easy to come by
i agree that this scheme will in the long run probably be a so-called "success", but i dont think it will overall be a net positive. between this the sugar tax, the minimum unit pricing on alcohol, the latte tax & other similar schemes the past few years i think it's a bit of a tipping point for most people somewhat amicable to the environmental cause/green politics. the fact that nearly every do-good policy has to punch down in some way (in either time or money) on regular folks instead of the global multinational companies & governments that overwhelming cause the harm.
take one example, if you walked into the confectionary section (and other sections but confectionary is one of the worst) of any shop, you'll notice a huge percent of plastic packaging is nothing more than empty material to take up as much shelf space or to help display/advertise the product. imagine how much plastic would be avoided it companies were told they can't use more than a certain percent needed to package the product? surely stopping plastic the source would be more useful than the majority of environmental policies that get enacted but would involv too much punching up & not enough punishing ordinary people
They lied’: plastics producers deceived public about recycling
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report
Went to my local Dunnes last night with a few 2L bottles of Coke (all which have the logo) only to find out that none of the RVM's can take a 2l bottle
was a bit shocked really thought 2l bottles would be common enough but clearly not. asked a member of staff and only thing he could say was that the machines in tesco down the road take the 2l bottles.
One of the biggest Tesco in Ireland in Wexford has yet to install its machines
Yet they are still charging the levy on cans that are not even marked - is this correct?
“Also, why cant people have a keytag type barcode/app, like a customer loyalty scheme, overall an app based system too, that you can either scan your tag or on phone screen bar or qr code?? and then upload any deposit return to your account?” - This would have been an excellent idea, I may have taken part in this scam if there was an app like a Revolut vault where you could put all of your return money into it and let it accumulate throughout the year, rather than queuing up for a scabby 15/30c with a voucher.
One doesn't really have anything to do with the other. You can bring the cans you buy there back to any machine, it doesn't have to be where you bought them.
Lots of cans are not marked yet, it's old stock. As long as the barcode is correct the machine will accept them.
This is the actual law on the matter. They have an obligation to take back all in scope items, the law doesn't say they must use the machines, never mind ones that are too small.
If you're bothered follow up with a manager, if no success there and you're really bothered you could follow up with the council who are the ones charged with prosecuting noncompliant retailers.
PART V
OBLIGATIONS OF RETAILERS
14. (1) Where a deposit under these Regulations is applicable, a retailer shall charge the deposit on the in-scope product to the customer and provide the consumer with proof of payment of the deposit.
(2) A retailer shall –
...
(f) take back every in-scope bottle and in-scope container returned to it by a consumer in a manner agreed between the retailer and the approved body,
(3) (a) A retailer shall immediately reimburse the value of the original deposit paid, in a manner prescribed by the approved body, to a consumer who presents an in-scope bottle or in-scope container for return, irrespective of where the in-scope product was purchased and the deposit first paid.
I didn't know this, i.e. that there were different specs (I know there are larger and smaller units, but up to now I figured the only difference was in capacity, or maybe speed).
I had assumed that the in scope bottles (up to 3l in size) would be redeemable at all RVMs, and that a spec was set to accommodate that. Its not like Re-turn are not aware of dimensions, its part of what they expect machines to assess.
While 3L is maybe unusual, 2L would be fairly standard. There are also 1.75L bottles, I wonder if they would work.
Re-turn may need to add a filter to their work-in-progress map. Or maybe not - this sounds like one of these consumer -or-retailer problem (nothing to do with re-turn).
Isn’t the EU supposed to be a democracy? Not a dictatorship? Why are they forcing countries to bend to their will?
The scheme is designed to drive footfall into the big retailers.
It's why they are all super on board with it.
TBF it's actually how it was sold to them.
Consumer Footfall
Potential to increase consumer footfall as consumers return their empty beverage containers to get their deposit fee refund.
Printing billions of bits of paper is actually good for the environment. You'll just have to trust me.
You don't seem to quite understand what democracy means.
We get to vote on these things. We can also leave, although as our neighbour has shown, life outside is quite ****
It's the same as any government/legislative body. They're elected (either Europe wide as an MEP, or elected locally and a member of the Council of the EU etc), then they make decisions. Don't like them, vote for someone else next time.
Well said, agree 100%
ppl wasting water washing out items that go to green bin, when they are not recycled, just wasting another resource... why bother even putting in black bin, leave it in green sure it aint recycled..
Recently saw panda put green and black bin into same green lorry :)
The whole thing is a joke, as a previous poster pointed out, if manufacturers actually packaged their products more environmentally friendly this would go a very long way to tackling the issue. But instead the public are charged with disposing their waste, TBH we have no option but to buy the way they package..
But this would be way too expensive and hot politically, just easier to charge the public..
Not one of the four machines within walking distance of me have been working even once since the scheme opened. I don't drive, so I've given up and put my bottles into my recycling bin.
We could also decide the RVMs and deposits are just a poor idea for Ireland and instead give each house a can and a bottle bin, use the existing recycling network and keep everyone happy.
I just hope people stop buying stuff and the shops are left full of stock .
won't happen.
my chill bottle on my desk is getting a lot more use
I wonder will they update their RVM location map to include whether the machine will take a 2 litre bottle it not. I can't understand how the entry hole couldn't have been standard across the board to accommodate all up to 2 litres.
First off, forgive me, I'm still struggling with this version of Boards and can't find where to do a search for something within a particular Thread .
I presume, given the size of these recycling machines, that they are squashing the bottles ? and I thought that Eamon Ryan was saying that with the old system one of the issues was that people were squashing the bottles .
I must be wrong about this surely ?
Except that isn't getting the required return rate, and plenty of people don't know or care how to use recycling bins properly anyway so stuff comes back utterly contaminated.
Yes, the machine squashes the bottles to save space.
The public is asked not to squash the bottle or can so that the machine can read the barcode.
Haven't a clue what Ryan was on about!
Shredding.
Optical sorting has trouble identifying squashed bottles in mixed streams; although I never saw it mentioned as a major problem. The container of shredded PET doesn't need to be further sorted.
Just put the bottles on the floor beside the machines. If everyone did this the retailers would get the machines sorted quick enough.
v
Let me say I'm not doubting your bona fides here, but i do know that every RVM manufacturer that is approved on the market tested the major bottles on the market. There is no way that this should be an issue. A Coke 2l is going to be a very volume high return item
Was it that the bottle would not fit or just that it wouldnt scan. After the Re-turn list was updated on about day 3, a pre-DRS scheme 2L shouldnt scan because Coke put new barcodes on pretty much all their DRS range. So basically as it stands now, only the Coke bottles with the DrS logo should scan in the machine.
I think its more to do with trust!
Still cant get my head around why we need this, as everyone has green bin, but I suppose Panda doesnt recycle!
As mentioned before why waste another resource to clean a recyclable item if said item does not get recycled?
Why arent manufacturers targeted about the wasteful / excessive packaging they use?
Thanks and thanks to L1011 as well .
So my next question is , did we all know this ? about not squashing our plastic bottles before putting it in our bin at home ?
Because I would have considered myself good at recycling but I didn't know and no one I asked since knew ( haven't asked out side my imediate circle ) .
Always squash if going in to the bin at home, takes up less space.
Only reason to not at the RVM is so it can be recognised as a valid intact item that 15/25c was given as a deposit for.
The Angry Man or Angry Man Land thing is interesting. Mentioning the environment, EU or targets just doesnt stand up against the insulting and anti consumer implementation of this scheme. Extra work, frustration and higher bin charges for anyone who was already recycling. What a bargain.
However it seems anyone pointing this out must be an anger management basket case.
the bottle would fit just not scan.
the bottle had the return logo and i was able to return them at a RVM at Tesco as was suggested by the dunnes staff member. but can only use the voucher in tesco now
is it possible that the machine in dunnes requires a software update maybe?
I'm getting my "recycle bin is full" sign ready and plan to burn these machines out of it so they can no longer house cans.
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