Would that be the same county councils that don't enforce dog fouling, or general littering?
https://www.thejournal.ie/dog-fouling-fines-dublin-city-council-6316621-Mar2024/
If they had the fancy €5000 fine for any item being sold that the fee was taken on but barcode had not been uploaded for all the machines to recognise the scheme would have run smoother.
..
That's a spectacularly indicative story. Thanks.
Yep in Denmark they have to do this. Probably encourages retailers to keep the machines in good working order as much as possible.
https://danskretursystem.dk/en/about-deposits/questions-about-deposits/
What happens if the reverse vending machine does not work? Stores must continue to refund the deposits manually if a reverse vending machine is out of service. Contact a store employee.
What happens if the reverse vending machine does not work?
Stores must continue to refund the deposits manually if a reverse vending machine is out of service. Contact a store employee.
Another interesting aspect of the Danish scheme is that they are required to transfer a portion of unclaimed deposits to the State rather than keep all the loot.
Hilarious to think how many times it was stated on here Re-Turn is the same scheme as elsewhere.
Our lads have every angle/penny covered. World champion gombeens.
These comments from people in charge like 'we knew there would be teething problems' bug the **** out of me. Every problem potentially stops someone from getting their own money back. If they knew there would be problems they should have put something in place to negate them as much as possible by insisting on manual returns when a machine was out of order, at least during the bedding in period. They had ages to plan for this sort of thing and those sort of comments show the contempt they have for the general public.
The whole scheme is out of order!
More like a police state every day, except we don't have any police to crack down. The idea that LA staff will be charged with patrolling retailers now to check for compliance and issuing fines is typical of our new leaders. If the same LAs actually had done their work in providing & emptying proper bins, we'd be far better off.
The suppliers of the RVMs blaming down time on people not being able to use them properly.
Let me speak for everyone, fúck off ye absolute melts.
I think it's a bit of both. Machines not quite up to it (yet) and people feeding the wrong stuff or being thick about it.
When dealing with the general public 'thick about it' is not something to be dismissed IMO. It only takes one eejit in a few hundred to ruin things for everyone. Shop lady told me the other day they had a couple of lads just dumping large black bags with rubbish by the side of the machines. Not bottles or recyclables just rubbish. Walked in dumped them there walked out. That didnt mess up the machines but gives an indication of what some people are up to. And I would believe it. There are only very few eejits thankfully but some of those are Olympic grade, so yes I would believe it.
Also I think - and I have nothing to back this up with only my personal experience - 1 in 7 machines down at any given time seems a little generous. My personal experience is more like 60:40 or 50:50.
My experience has been no where close to 50:50 tbh. Maybe I've been lucky.
I used to really like when we could pay less for the drinks and walk out the back door to put the cans and plastic bottles in our recycle bin, Vs paying more, having to store empties somewhere and then bring them to a machine in a shop that might or might not work.
Designing a machine meant to be used high frequency by all members of the general public, and then coming out with lies like that.
What a bunch of lying incompetent weasels, enabled by other lying incompetent overpaid weasels in Re-turn and Government.
In a recycle bin that you already pay for.
And keep putting your milk cartons in that bin, not in the RVMs.
I've got a 1 litre plastic yoghurt carton here to go in my green bin, but the 200ml fruit shoot my kid just drank has to go back to an RVM for a 15cent rebate.
None of this makes sense.
Makes sense to Ossian and his pals.
So first time using the machine. Aldi machine and 14 identical perfect Aldi's own Tonic Water cans (150ml sold as x8 multipack) + one with a big ding in it. 11 cans went through although 5 or 6 needed at least two if not more tries. Damaged one went through first time. Three other identical cans didn't (tried both machines and even gave the cans a polish up). Got my 45p back at the checkout.
Not a stellar start from my point of view.
I can't understand why a machine will accept some cans from a multi batch but not others. This doesn't seem like the sort of thing that will be fixed and will just be a quirk of the system that people will be expected to put up with.
You got your money back at the till but lots of people would just dump them and take the loss, then not bother next time.
That's interesting that Aldi lived up to their responsibility and reimbursed the 45 cent.
This needs to become the norm.
I have only used the machine twice, Aldi in Nutgrove. Only one machine on site and it gets filled quickly. However everything I put in was accepted, I have a knack with “shaping” bottles for the scanner 😁 which probably comes from decades of experience scanning reused mis-shapen barcodes on library books before RFID became the norm in the libraries.
I wish the can makers would make the return it logo bigger so it's easier to see if you are picking one up off the street to boost your old age pension😉
Even the minister admitting it's a sh1tshow . https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/deposit-return-scheme-reliability-not-good-enough-minister-admits-as-our-survey-reveals-extent-of-issues/a1832644804.html
"Police state, new leaders, crackdown."
Relax, it's just someone from the council calling to have a chat with a few shopkeepers.
"Some people just don't like change".
"There may have been issues with people attempting to return cans that aren't in scope".
Eh, no, we know what we're at, thanks.
You can probably thank the lobbying power of the dairy industry for that.
I think it's much more likely that the government knew that there would be a huge backlash if families had to go through this nonsense every time that they wanted to put a few litres of milk in the fridge.
Have to agree that I also find the RVMs fairly robust when it comes to dealing with crushed cans/bottles and even 'roadkill' (cans that have been flattened by cars driving over them!). I generally partially crush all plastic containers and cans beforehand now so that I can fit more in a bag, in the confidence that they will be accepted by the RVMs. When it comes to roadkill cans, so long as the barcode is relatively intact, I just bend the flattened can along its length so that it has some height to it to satisfy the RVM acceptance criteria.
The issue with the scheme is every store that registered for manual returns to avoid buying a machine, doesn't actually take manual returns, and no one is enforcing the rules on them, same with those who have machines, if machine is down, they're suppose to take cans/bottle back over the counter, and again no will take them back manually
these rules need to be enforced. Someone needs to go into Dunnes when a machine is down, and pour a big bags of 100 cans on the checkout,
went to get some shopping in dunnes & filled my backpack with empty bottles, one machine in dunnes was rejecting every bottles despite having the logo. then had to wait about 10 minutes while another lad put in nearly a whole trollies worth to use the other machine which worked fine. even while waiting the 10 mins i'm wondering wtf do i do if it's rejected again? waste time walking to another supermarket? just leave them there and waste the deposit money? save them for another day and have to buy a bag since my backpack i was gonna use for shopping is still full of empty bottles?
think i might in future just start putting them in the black bin like some other posters here. it's really not worth the effort & nuisance
haven't actually done much research on this scheme tbh and mostly just posted on personal experience, but had a quick search cos i kept hearing people say how every single other european country has this and it works perfecty blah blah blah. how the hell is this every other european country? (green active, yellow planned, grey doesn't have it)
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