A lot of people's isn't... boil water notices etc
Mine smells like a swimming pool overdosed with chlorine. I suppose that makes it safe, in a way... but not palatable compared to bottled water.
There is a difference between unfit for consumption and palatable.
If the water doesn't taste right especially in a cup of tea people will spend the extra for bottled water.
At least the 5 litre is exempt from deposits.
That is the case for a large number of people.
And when a water supply is contaminated Irish Water are extremely slow to get the message out. If someone in your house is vulnerable to contaminated water, it's much easier to just buy water rather than depending on Irish Water to let you know if your supply has been contaminated.
Was at the Energy show day in RDS and had lunch in the restaurant, including a plastic bottle of water..I wonder if they have a separate waste stream for the bottles and tins.
One of the guys who attend every year to fill his bag with pens pencils condoms etc was loading up with the re-turn stamped empties
Extremely slow would be a week or 2.
Try a year.
That is not an isolated incident either, far from it and not exclusive to when that fat quango was thrust upon us.
I don't like it. I just feel like I'm paying more for my bottle of whatever as I couldn't be arsed to bring it to one of the machines.
It's a tax on lazy people like myself.
A detailed article from the Dublin Inquirer on the challenges for people with disabilities in using the scheme:
As for the height of the machines, the IWA guidelines, which include a diagram, say that “Any public access terminal should be situated no more than 1200mm above floor level with the keypad controls at a height of 900mm.”
On the machines at Lidl on Thomas Street, the bottom of the slot for inserting bottles and cans is 1420mm above the ground. At the Tesco Express down the road, the height is the same.
I was outside the same shop today and spotted a plastic milk carton crammed behind the general waste bin. Could they not use the mountains of unclaimed deposits to post information leaflets out to every household, on what can go in the machine and what cannot.
Another public bin down the road is also overflowing. Guess what, the recycle machine was full and not working this morning.
Hopefully in a few months this will all settle down and work, but it is very inefficient considering most households have a recycle bin collected fortnightly.
…..
According to the man in charge, unclaimed deposits will pay for the scheme, you know the one NOT FOR PROFIT.
What about the deposits paid, but the machines refuse to refund? It this not fraud by Repak?
In all fairness now, Repak is not running this scheme, ReTurn is.
I used the return scheme yesterday for the first time (local Lidl), 40 x 500ml bottles. Every bottle was accepted, voucher for €6 printed in less than 2 minutes.
When it works. it works well for those who can access it easily. I have had 70 to 80% success rate in 2 different scenarios.
I've used it 4 times since it began, twice it worked fine, like you say quick and straightforward
Twice however I had to get one of the workers to reset the machine and on one of those occasions a product that had the logo (and had a deposit paid) wasn't accepted by the machine. 1.5L lidl sparkling water for anybody interested
The bottle not being accepted seems to be a common issue as the staff member went off with the bottle and came back with a different one quite quickly
They operate out of the same building and are basically the same company even if they have different registration numbers etc.
https://re-turn.ie/
Re-turn, Red Cow Interchange Estate, 1 Ballymount Rd, Dublin 22, D22 HW67
https://repak.ie/
Red Cow Interchange Estate, 1 Ballymount Road, Clondalkin, Dublin 22, D22 HW67
Here is their proposal to the government for the scheme:
https://assets.gov.ie/153814/ec9ef046-1ee3-48eb-a3e7-42cccf3793dd.pdf
For this system to be any bit acceptable, the success rate should be 100% for everybody. Anything worse than that is a failure to the public, because it means the public is missing out on their own money.
70%.80%/90% success rate isn't good enough.
It should be a high priority task, in particular while the scheme is still growing & people need to locate their local machines. I notice every exempt store I have visited displays a QR code pointing to that map (as is their responsibility), so there is a responsibility on re-turn for the map to be kept up to date and accurate. Poor form that they are not doing it well.
On Tues 5 March re-turn claimed they had 2m collections since start; the following Tuesday they shared the news that they had made over 5m collections since start.
I note with some interest that re-turn did not issue any press release this Tuesday or since about the number of items it has collected.
I guess this is because they are waiting on the next nice B I G roundy number to come - i.e. 10m items. I believe this will likely fall around the 23rd or 24th March - so watch out for the press release on Monday or Tuesday.
I imagine Mr Foley probably met his PR team today to work out the spin this time. A little dash of fake humility (thanks to the great Irish public, etc) is a given. A little sprinkle of self congratulation on a difficult job well done is a good bet too - perhaps expect a little note about how the "anticipated teething issues" are firmly in the past. The press release will certainly include ship some verbage about 'Ireland advancing our recycling goals', etc. Watch as they take the opportunity to tell everyone that retailers can no longer be supplied non logo-ed stock and they must 'sell through' (a Mr Foley stock phrase) old stock by 1 June.
While newsdesks will dutifully parrot the B I G N U M B E R in print and broadcast without any challenge, I thought I might share some of the stats that definitely will not be included in the press release. Some of my numbers are bigger news than re-turns, in case anyone in the press is reading this ;)
The bottom line is that re-turn is not gaining momentum, and I don't see how we get from 10% to 90%. People it would seem are either 'sucking up' the deposit as a tax (and still recycling at home), or have had a bad experience with the scheme and decided they won't be bothering again.
Workings/Links -:
Good lad
Excellent Post!
It will end up as the next Westlink Toll Bridge, a licence for a private company to print money at the expense of the public.
This is good anpost get to deal with your waste.
Could one arrange a bulk collection, and still get paid back all the deposits, seeing at there are countless return bin trucks on the road
Already past 10m.
Please share your source for this.
You miss the point that the scheme is still in the phasing in process. Not every shopper is fully aware of the scheme yet and not every can/bottle can be returned. I suspect your figure of 4m containers being sold with the re-turn logo and applicable barcode is too high and the actual figure is closer to 0.5m-1m. Most notably many of the smaller independent craft brewers haven't started on the scheme yet. Some might revert to glass bottles and never take part in the scheme
Until every in-scope product can be returned the numbers will be low but as more and more products come in to the scheme every day those numbers should increase. I suspect the numbers will continue to grow and at some point over the summer re-turn will start publishing the month-by month re-turn rate instead of, or perhaps alongside, the overall number
Another thing that is likely to happen is the move away from cans and plastic bottles by consumers as people will not want the hassle of returning them so what is currently 5m sales/day could drop significantly
But he is quoting figures from ReTurn. "I suspect your figure of 4m is too high". It wasn't a finger in their wind approximation, it is from a ReTurn press release.
The 4m is specifically stated to be a guess; it is not from a press release.
This scheme is a pita but fair play to Aldi on the Belgard Road. I've used the machine 4 times now and it hasn't rejected one item. Yesterday the machine on the right was out of order so I used the one on the left. By they time we'd done our shopping both were working.
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