Oddly, that's probably the best option for it from an environmental POV. People think the plastic just magically reappears once it's recycled, forgetting the fossil fuels and water that are used in order to recycle it. That's if it's a recyclable plastic and assuming it hasn't been recycled too many times. Glass and aluminium, for context, are infinitely recyclable.
It's not change for me. Its the inconvenient, inflexible way this government has approached this recycling issue that I have a problem with. The system they have provided is too simplistic and will exclude certain parts of the irish communities.
The whole issue of contamination is a big fallacy, don't know if it's return pushing this message, but it's been mentioned a few times on thread and it's simply not true.
While somebody putting wrong materials in the recycling is an issue, it is not anywhere near the issue being indicated. I know this because many many years ago I worked on a recycling picking and sorting line in one of the major waste companies and they are set up to deal with this. Something horrible like a nappy might cause the few items it touches to end up going to landfill, but the idea that one bad bin can wreck a whole street or trucks worth of material is a blatant lie.
From hands on experience i can say that what I saw was that 95% of what went into recycling bins was put there with the best intentions, and probably 85% plus of the material was recoverable. Yes, occasionally something horrible would appear, but that just went through the process and into general waste while everything around it was recovered with no issue.
It is not in the interests of waste companies to landfill valuable materials. In fact, the company i worked for had fascinating tech in place to recover not just from the recycling bins, but also to recover material such as metal, paper, plastic, soil and stone from general waste too, though that was a lot more difficult to do of course.
If some waste companies are sending all material to landfill or incineration, that's an issue the government could have taken up with the waste companies through legislation. While i can see why there may be negative opinions about waste companies, and no doubt some are dodgy, many of them are doing things 100% right and have been all along.
could
Contamination of domestic bins is another spoof being pushed to try to justify this system. I personally put it at the same level as the hoardes of homeless people who will apparently pick up litter for the return fee, aka absolute scutter.
Raging that some shops who have the machine stipulate that the refund is spent in that particular branch and other shops say they can be spent in any branch of their chain.
Making a simple system more complicated than it needs to be.
Agreed. The EU leave it up to the member state to create a bespoke system to suit their needs (like you mention our small market) and plan for any country specific issues. Problem is in the EU a transposed directive is only challenged on a reactionary basis by EU citizens. So politicians (chancers) of the ilk we produce are basically left unsupervised and they know it. And here we are. An Ireland round the corner half job special. Re-Turn:
Yep, take places like forest car parks. All used to have bins but Coillte reduced local staff and no one to empty them, LAs could have stepped up and emptied them but no - so they were all removed.
This scheme is an expensive fig leaf to pretend we are doing something.
This is what's happening in Drogheda at the moment, the dog waste bins are being removed, seemingly because they're too full and they couldn't be bothered emptying them. How any county council can remove bins and then whinge about litter is beyond me.
The positive I'm trying to look upon with the scheme is that I now know that mine and others cans and bottles will actually be properly recycled instead of going to landfill because of contamination through misuse of recycling bins.
Cans and bottles get treated and washed before they are recycled.
Anyway I have bad news for you. This directive has nothing to do with recycling, it's a litter collection scheme. Or in reality a bean counting exercise.
We don't have the facilities at scale to recycle, so they will still end up incinerated (technically recycled or down cycled) and exported.
The reality is, it's more polluting and more expensive to recycle plastic. There is also evidence that it can be more harmful to humans.
The whole thing as our previous environmental minister stated is Green Washing.
Pure theatre, nothing else.
Not one country that has this scheme has reduced it's dependency on single use plastic, in fact the opposite happens.
If they wanted to make a difference to the litter on the go problem, they should have installed proper drink fountains in every city, town and village in country at a fraction of the price.
And then maybe you know force the CCs and LAs to install a bin or 2.
Because they are rarer than telephone boxes.
But but but if they install bins people will throw bags of rubbish into them, well yeah, The alternative is that bag of rubbish goes in the river or the bush.
Also the vast vast vast majority of on the go litter is not bottles and cans.
I can actually see the littering problem become more acute, as the CCs sit on their arsés and believe the RVMs will sort it all.
I'm not defending waste collection companies here for a second as they have been the bane of my life recently since moving house with non collections, no customer service etc. However they cannot control what people put in their recycling bins.
The GPS tracker you mentioned, I'm sure his bin was perfectly clean and all material was recyclable but who's to say his neighbours took the same care. There could have been all sorts of contaminants mixed in with his bin in the truck from people around him not recycling properly and contaminating the entire waste load.
I may be living in hope that the scheme helps increase effectiveness of recycling but I'd rather that than knowing for certain that my cans in my green bin are ending up in Ringsend.
And the dutch are very efficient too. Can't see Ireland hitting 68!
"The positive I'm trying to look upon with the scheme is that I now know that mine and others cans and bottles will actually be properly recycled instead of going to landfill because of contamination through misuse of recycling bins."
And couldn't that have been equally achieved by leaning on the bin collection companies and insisting that they separate the materials properly. You'll have heard of the case in Dublin where a citizen dropped gps trackers in his perfectly clean recyclables and they terminated at the incinerator in Ringsend. The 'contamination' problem has also not been helped by the messaging that all sorts of soft plastic wrappings and crisp bags could be put in recycle bin. These are essentially trash and better suited to incineration.
There were and are other ways of tackling any 'contamination' problems other than inventing a whole new scheme at considerable cost with benefits flowing to certain companies.
I really dont see how this isnt costing more money.
Extra time in shops to process vouchers.
Extra time in shops writing vouchers if they dont have a machine.
Extra time required to clean up the rejected cans left in shops.
Security guards probably need at some point to prevent vandalism.
Machine break downs requiring staff to spend time taking an ear bashing form people who arrive with their bottles.
There is so much time added on to life in general for both Joe Public and supermarket and shop staff, not to mention producers etc that this is just a massive time sink for everyone. Costs come with time sinks.
Jesus what an ill thought out scheme.
Continuing to insist on having the label going forward seems to be rather pointless, it's just causing trouble for small producers, and the mixed messaging about how you don't now always need labels has watered down the message massively. What's the point of the label apart from making the seemingly non-existent manual returns process easier?
the public are not their "customers".
the public are literally their workforce here.
they are 'not for profit' so they have no interest in keeping the general public happy or not.
I get that completely and there are issues with it that I have highlighted and many more in rural areas or people who get their shopping delivered.
"Tens of millions have been spent on this (by various organisations) and when you do something like that you always have to ask was there a better way." - In full agreement with this, never ceases to amaze me the amount of money spent in consultation stages and come up with basic/poorly thought up concepts.
Tens of millions have been spent on this (by various organisations) and when you do something like that you always have to ask was there a better way.
The people who throw their bottles/cans out the window or leave them at a park/beach aren't going to stop doing that (unfortunately) for the sake of a euro or two.
If this scheme is because of EU directives (standard lazy excuse at times), then what about the Single Market? Goods coming from other EU countries will be penalised if they don't have return codes, and given the small size of the Irish marlet, it may not be worthwhile to code cans specially for the Irish market.
For large countries like Germany, there would not be much of a problem, simply because of the size of the market, would make return codes worthwhile.
I've raised a few queries on their Facebook posts and no responses. Likewise I notice others unanswered. A few complimentary messages get the thumbs up and some interaction from Return.
Important rule of business is not to piss off your customers. And you should deal with all queries/ comments. This crowd couldn't give a toss about their 'customers' the public.
It's not only clickbait it's completely misleading.
The company are saying they would have to hire two more people not fire two people.
Having said that this is a real issue and will mean the loss of some niche products to the Irish market.
Hopefully some practical workaround can be put in place until an EU wide scheme is developed.
As expected, relabeling is not easy for small craft beer companies
(20% of workforce seems to be 2 people, so seems a bit clickbaity, but the point remains)
There are a significant amout of people, the people who care, who have issues with the scheme - there's a lot on here and on other sites.
These are the people that have recycled for the past couple of decades and who WANT to see these types of things work, yet cannot see how they will.
Ironicilly, the people who don't care and who have never cared about this type of thing - that this very scheme needs to care - don't care enough about the scheme to even complain about it, never mind actively engage with it.
I was giving my honest opinion on using them for the first time, it took me all of 1 min extra before doing my shop and I receieved my full deposit back.
I have made assertions that there are issues with the scheme (not accessible for wheelchair users, machines not working etc.) But I do believe the that there is overblown hysteria about something that will increase effectiveness of recycling bottles and cans that could take a couple of minutes from someone's week.
Nail on the the head.
The blindness of politicians to the effect of this on the vast majority of people who were already recycling is staggering.
Kieran Cuddihy said it right at the end of this piece
I'd seen some people were posing questions to return on their Instagram page, fair questions too, and they've been busy deleting all the comments, all gone today. Must not have liked the points people were raising. Not a good look.
Wondering also about the increased use in large plastic bags. All my recycling went loose into the bin as requested by the bin company. How many extra bags will be used now for storage and transport? And we were so proud of getting rid of plastic single use shopping bags.
love the bad faith point about people complaining merely cos they dont like change & not about the scheme giving you the choice to either waste your money or waste your time.
as if if they kept things the way they were but changed our green bin to a pink bin we'd all similarly be complain merely cos we hate change lol
These bulk machines seems more practical .
Se
We already have multi chamber bin trucks, the company I use takes compost, glass and recycling/waste depending on the week in 3 compartments of the one truck. I'd say if you really wanted such a scanner and were willing to pay a lot you could get one. Significant slow down and massively increased costs as you say, yes
Dutch system is smart
Californian system you get paid by weight for what you bring to a recycling centre (flaw) after paying a 10c deposit on every container regardless of weight (flaw) but interestingly your bin company can also claim the same amount, in theory this makes bin charges in general lower. But I'm sure there's greed in there somewhere
Some say this scheme was always coming in with EU directives. Maybe so but Re-Turn is what happens when our politicians get their grubby paws on EU directives.
Greenbeenery
noun
Consequences of half assed green party gombeenery.
There just isn’t a (practical/implementable) way around the unfair home delivery issue for people who can rarely get to an RVM, and only ReTurn is the entity gaining.
Re stink bombs etc, this sort of annoying thing is inevitably going to happen. But I can see potential security issues without posting in detail here. Bear in mind these machines are mostly placed where people egress from the premises although there would be emergency exits elsewhere.
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