Deposit return scheme (recycling)

it would be far much easier to bring our recycling rate up to 90% if they accepted damaged cans. Out of every lets say 20 cans i find discarded on the street, if i'm lucky 3 of them are undamged. And if i'm even more lucky they all have the return logo's on them, rather than 2 being non-return and the occasional one or to being a free returnable deposit. They really want too much control over the whole thing and want to give the orders and call the shops but arr'nt really willing to bend on anything or give anything in return. Recycling is a voluntary activity and they're lucky people even recycle in the first place, now it just seems they're attempting to exploit that for their own political target recycling goal reasons, and bully others into partaking also. Why punish people who already recycle anyway? it has actually put-off alot of people who already recycle. i know some who have been doing it for years do it no longer as this lark was the last straw for them. Some points on here by others reflect this sentiment too. it's basically a case of "ireland govt got caught with their pants down by the EU and now have been told to get in line, got the wind put up them, and trying to force these stats/target goal numbers out of the public by crapping on their own people once again" .

As for what you've wrote: i agree somewhat, harming the enviroment is always the wrong way to protest. Infact i've even made countless posts here saying that its better to protest by harming their pockets aka returning the containers so its less money they get to keep from deposits, which sounds weird on paper and better in theory. But i feel the part your missing about these people "harming eviorment to protest" is the fact that they're not actually protesting against the enviroment or anything enviorment related at all, but rather against the system itself that put all this scheme in place, and against the country overall. Some do it for politically motivated reasons, and some just do it out of backlash from being impedied on and having this scheme forced on them as nothing more than an inconvenience and an extra tax. People are sick of prices always going up, sick of being ripped off and cheated, and sick of having to pay for other peoples green initiatives. Green things and charity should not cost us money, the people who stand for those things should be putting their hand into their own pocket, not footing it to the public.

You're incorrect about the scheme coming into place, many seperated rubbish. We all did our part, or alot of us anyway. The bin men did not do their part, they did not do the seperating or actually recycle anything, thats why we had no numbers to show the EU, the whole scheme is because of ireland not actually ever recycling the plastic waste etc. They just sell our recycling waste and ship it off to other countries for a quick profit. Now EU really put the wind up them, and thus the birth of this DRS scheme. Its not for the enviorment but rather for stats/numbers to show the EU.

For those many years people recycled put their recycleables into the green recycling bins, we were lied to as none of it ever actually got recycled. Thats the important thing to remember. its like an adult version of santa claus. This scheme let many peek behind the curtain and see all the smoke and mirrors. The greens even sent a letter in the door about 2 years back about this, and their solution disgusted me on the letter which was "here's the problem, here's whats happening, and here's how we intend to fix it, we'll just tax it and make money off of it, also vote for us by the way" lark.

Recycling is voluntary, and they're lucky we're even doing it (or have been doing it) in the first place. Now they're just taking it for granted. Also last question in this long essay post: what are the enviromental benefits of this scheme? and do they outweigh the unbenefits?/disbenifits? (for my lack of knowledge on a proper word for it).

The shop owner came up with a similar solution, that he could re-pay deposit to customer, then bag items, then Re-turn would fund the transport & refund shop owner. People get groceries direct from mainland shops too, pay deposit etc.

and where waste goes - for years recyclables are baled and sent to mainland

There's a line of bottle bins near me and I do use it occasionally (rare I need to) but there's no can option.

I did do a landfill run earlier though… 8 bags of mixed rubbish including one of grass cuttings. 15 quid took care of the lot (it's been less before but I put that down to the weight of the grass cuttings). The grass emptied onto the pile in the corner. The rest into the compactor.

As I live alone I do these runs maybe once every 6-8 weeks. Compared to what I'd spend on bin collections or time-wasting carting bags of empty cans about, it more than pays for itself.

Trying to make us believe that all the supermarkets were going to turn into Dr Quirkeys with the all singing, all dancing machines throwing out the jackpot in 5 cent coins every time we inserted a can is the first one.

Well it was just a thought that rather than paying to get rid of €16 worth of cans you might get rid for free.

But I suppose if you are determined to dump the €16 the extra cost is marginal.

Maybe when all cans are deposit paid those bottle bank bins will disappear anyway.

I know this might be hard for you but try to stay on topic

mod - warning issues for back seat moderating

Is answering the question you asked by providing one of the times you've lost the plot off topic?

I gave you one of your earliest ones to make it easier for you find all the ones that follow for yourself.

You're welcome 👍.

Let's not forget the difference between Collection Rates and Recycling Rates.

Lets add them to the list of proofs requested so far:

• demanding proof that people are stock piling containers
• demanding proof that manual returns take up staff / customer time
• deducing that dragging your used containers back in store is fine because customers have bad hygiene anyway
• demanding proof that store signage is not photoshopped. Stating the store location will clear that up somehow.
• demanding proof that recent significant price increases are not related to Re-Turn.
• demanding proof that containers collected by this scheme are not incinerated anyway / not recycled in Ireland.
• demanding proof that this scheme is not having a net negative effect on the environment.

Had been putting off using the machines for fear of making a tit of myself but finally did it today. Easiest thing in the world to do. Completely idiot proof.

The problem is theres no transparency on how much of what we are led to believe is recycled is incinerated or landfilled. I know of a skip firm near to where I live who've been just burying everything on their land totally illegally. No enforcement from the Council so definitely no transparency. Its a joke.

We're asked to believe everything just because it says so on the Re-Turn website. I find that notion fanciful at best and flat out naive at worst. As Boggles has said on many occasions "pure theatre".

https://www.irishtimes.com/environment/2023/11/28/ireland-overly-reliant-on-exporting-waste-for-recycling-epa/

"Just under 28 per cent of plastic packaging generated in Ireland was
recycled in 2021, with the remainder being treated by incineration (70
per cent) and disposal (2 per cent)."

Lucky for you the machine was working.

Some bottles have thin plastic and go out of shape very easily such that they tend to get rejected. A simple hack is to blow the bottles into shape, works nicely :)

not against the scheme, more of a question but say you return the cans, have a 4 euro voucher, go to buy a bottle of milk while in the shop for 2 euro, I presume you can’t use half the voucher and save the other half for another time? Or would that make too much sense?