Deposit return scheme (recycling)

Yes, the labels cost a fraction of a cent each. But the new label had to be designed by someone. The label printer had to be reconfigured with the new image. Someone had to print out thousands of the labels, and someone else had to remove the old labels and apply the new labels. All these steps have a cost, and so that cost has to be passed on to someone.

CFO thinking: No-one would notice a 1 cent increase on the item, and inflation might go up even further, so lets just add a cent to cover the current change expense and future possible eventualities.

Most people don't do their shopping first thing in the morning before they have to get on with their busy days.

I have no idea why you are trying to cause an argument over someone's real life experience of this scheme.

It's absolutely nothing to do with your situation but you feel compelled to insert yourself into it, not everyone is you.

They "say" it will happen. So it's just an aspiration. We've been told a lot of stuff about recycling & this scheme that has turned out to be dubious \ misinformation or just plain lies. The Green Party got excited about diesel, remember how that turned out. They get "excited" about a lot of things that don't pan out the way they thought it would. How "excited" a politician gets about a scheme and whether the scheme will actually deliver on that are often strangers. Thinking about it "logically" there's no direct connection between the two.

This is true, they say they will recycle what we return to the RVMs but we don't actually know what will happen unless an investigative journalist does some digging on the matter or we get a whistleblower on the case. I still think it's more likely they recycle than burn them though. They were not wrong in their excitement about diesel at the time, it splurts out less CO2 than petrol, they never considered the other issues such as NOx but the CO2 claims were correct

Didn't the Green Party get excited, encouraging us to put cans and bottles in the green bin so that could be recycled? Well, how did that work out?

We had a return rate of ~60% whichwas too low. If everybody did put their stuff in the recycling bin (remember it's not green for everybody) then we wouldn't need this scheme. I find it ironic that glass is returned to such a high level despite having no deposit. I wonder if there was no deposit, just RVMs, would this scheme be as successful

Remember the head of Re-turn telling people to contact him (!) if they had trouble with returns, or home deliveries.

No, I don't actually recall that happening . I believe it happened though. Re-turn is an auful company tasked with one job they couldn't get right

Someone needs to bring a case against the state for interfering with free trade between EU states.

This was 2021 but it can't have changed much.

Seventy per cent of plastic packaging generated in Ireland was incinerated in 2021 with only about 28% recycled

And some of that 72% is waste that people believe to be "recycled". Better to incinerate it than landfill or worse burn it in your back-yard though.

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

Have been to several European countries where it is common to see homeless people collecting cans/bottles in order to return them to fund the purchase of relatively cheap alcohol.

Thanks to MUP being introduced in Ireland (to protect us from ourselves), alcohol is too expensive here for this to work.

Had my first interaction with the scheme today (if you ignore the time I was charged the deposit for a can that wasn't in the scheme). Before it came in I had stocked up on cans, avoiding the tariff.

Today I had some empty qualifying cans, so decided to try it out before doing my shopping. Both machines were out of order in my local Lidl. No way I was going to carry them around while doing my shopping, then take them home again, rinse and repeat. The cans went into the general bin in Lidl (the only bin they had).

I'm going to treat this scheme as the tax it is. I'll factor it onto the price of whatever I buy, I'm not bothered with the hassle.

The only way I see this scheme being rolled back is if it actually decreases the rate of recycling.

A small can of Pepsi was one nice roundy euro before this scam came in. Now, it's 1.55 plus deposit, so 1.70.

But don't worry, according to return, this doesnt cost the public anything. That seventy per cent price increase is just our imagination.

How much is a refill?

I think a lot of it is coming down to what spec the machines are.

My local SuperValu has two large machines in a multi-storey carpark - it seems to work very well as there's loads of space and capacity and it's all neat and tidy.

Cans and bottles all fed in and it spat out a receipt without any issues.

I think the fact you can't just scan your Supervalu Rewards club app or something is a bit Stone Age but it seems we just copied it from cash-is-king, long-live the fax machine Germany, despite the fact that most Irish customers seem to have an expectation of contactless phone-based payment everywhere now.

Spitting out bits of paper in 2024 is just a bit archaic.

You'd think they'd just have a Re-Turn app, and you could just tap your phone.

The issues I encountered were with the smaller, low spec machines. They were absolutely useless and fiddly.

They used to be cheap in Argos - but I can only find currys now… 30 euros…

https://www.currys.ie/products/sodastream-spare-gas-cylinder-21656710.html

There are devices you can fill yourself - but you would need to be sure you are using food grade gas source - nothing that has oil or anything in it.

They're cheaper in The Range.

Tiny machine in my local shop seems bullet proof.

RVM Systems is the maker, seem to be Swedish. Looking at the specs and that vendor of machine does actually support loyalty card refunding - I don't know if the rules would allow that as an option here; it couldn't be the only option obviously.

Lidl's large machines appear to be made out of cardboard and bailing twine based on how 'reliable' they are; dunno who makes them. Could be the same vendor for all I know

Its both. Retailers and manufacturers can shove it for their price increase, and return can shove it further for their scam which enabled it.

I didnt buy the drink, but had to laugh when i saw the rvm in the shop was, as always, out of order.

That's pretty poor value.

I know if you're a fan of sparkling water, you can get under-sink filter/chiller units from Grohe for example, but they're seriously expensive, coming in at over €1000 and going off into totally mad money at the upper end. They're kinda one of those 'roll it in with the price' kitchen items for people with more money than sense.

In theory some of these systems could be a good solution to the endless amounts of fizzy drinks bottles but not at that price.

Soda Stream always struck me as more of a gimmick than anything else.