DEPOSIT REFUND SCHEME | Urban Agenda Platform
Deposit refund schemes are systems where consumers pay a small amount of money upfront, to be reimbursed to them when they bring the container to a collection point once they have finished using it.
Apparently we copied some undisclosed out of thin air country in Europe. No return to the store you got it from no voucher none of the addons. And notice collection point not RVM. Even the return website says they are not mandatory. Cash grab plain and simple. steel is also mentioned in return. The green bins never took steel ? do the RVM. I thought steel was only used for like water bottles and cantinas and alike not beverage cans.
Ray Darcy just mentioned it now.
€54,000,000 not claimed. He's not impressed that ReTurn are keeping the money.
Well easy both are and were scams.
To date, over approximately 60% of plastic bottles and cans are being collected for recycling through recycling bins, which means that over 30% are not collected, leading to increased littering.
By placing a value on the drinks containers, we are incentivising consumers to return their bottles and cans in order to get their deposit back and discourage littering. The Deposit Return Scheme is a circular economy initiative that aims to create a closed loop recycling system guaranteeing the material is returned and recycled into new drinks containers.
In addition, with the separate collection of drinks containers, there is no cross contamination and a higher quality of recyclate is collected, which is more efficient.
over 30% are not collected, leading to increased littering. Is that not an out and out lie ? People who put them in the green bin are not tossing them on the road now instead.
Currently, Ireland has a recycling rate of over 80% for glass and is surpassing recycling targets for this material. As a result, there are no plans to include glass in the Scheme but this may be open to change in the future.
1 return will never get 80% like glass.
2 why are they not saying 20% of the bottles are being tossed on the road like the plastic ones ? is that because it's a lie ?
some digging
Ireland’s recycling rate has not improved in a decade: it is time to move away from a wasteful linear economy | Environmental Protection Agency
Single-use Plastics
The report shows that over the last 10 years Ireland’s recycling rate has stagnated and mandatory targets for municipal and plastic packaging are at a high risk of not being met. Currently Ireland’s municipal waste recycling rate is unchanged at 41 per cent, with a requirement to be at 55 per cent by 2025. In addition, whilst recycling of packaging waste is 60 per cent, this must reach 65 per cent by 2025. In 2022 the plastic packaging recycling was 32 percent, up from 28 per cent in 2021, however the recycling target for plastic packaging is 50 per cent by 2025.
Single use not Pet
Are PET plastics recyclable?
Almost uniquely among plastics, PET is near-infinitely recyclable and because it can be made into new products, this lowers the need for fresh PET to be made, further reducing emissions. In fact, recycled PET products show a drop of up to 90% in CO2 emissions compared with virgin PET.
What is the problem with PET plastic?According to the rapport, PET plastic can leak harmful chemicals into its contents. This chemical leaking is extremely toxic to humans and can have various side effects on those who consume them. After the use of PET products, they are thrown away.
But But green.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/12/my-no-plastic-life-i-tried-to-cut-out-single-use-items-for-a-month-and-it-almost-broke-me
This was in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago.
It's a bit long but I found it interesting.
You'll find a lot of information about DRS online.
See below for the legislation.
https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2024/si/33/made/en/print
https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2021/si/599/made/en/print
IW and DRS are very different. How did you manange to mix them up?
No offence but should the gov or return not be telling us this in the first place. Reminds me of Irish water all over again. Why do we need it. Well it's centralized and will make savings. Did they not hire staff for IW and then take in all the council staff also ? so no savings there. Again If IW was working they would be screaming how great it is and not rename it and pretend we are goldfish. It's almost like something was afoot like there is in Return. Does the Government have direct access to Return and it's accounts were the money is actually going.
You'll have to do research to get answers to your questions. Don't trust anyone here.
How are they keeping track then of the 25% in the bottles laser etching on the barcode or bottle ? Sounds exactly like return and government basically trust us. IIRC it's 5-7 times it can be partially recycled. Where is the rest going ? land fill in Indonesia ? Class idea spend carbon to recycle carbon less efficiently each time then spend some more carbon shipping it to another countries landfill. Why not just incinerate it here.
The question on everyone's lips is the entire stats being released. I Guarente they will never be under the guise of commercial sensitivity even though it's and entire monopoly. And on the other end if they were favorable they would be screaming them from the roof tops already.
It should be called RyanScam.
Some people that aren't able to abide by those rules. Ya know, like the people I outlined in the post you replied to but didn't really understand.
Re-Turn make it deliberately difficult to claim back your money because their machines are absolute shite. The one nearest me is, literally, pot luck on whether it's working on a given day. I've lost count the number of times I've seen it out of order in the first year of this nonsense and I'm not the only one with that experience.
Plus, and I'll repeat it because you obviously didn't get it the first time, the old, the infirm and the handicapped are inconvenienced to an even greater degree because they can't get out to a machine in the first place and that's increased if they live in a rural place. Re-Turn couldn't give a crap and they're happy to keep the money that people aren't able to claim back.
This so called "scheme" could have been introduced with electronic payments that the consumer could use to instantly claim THEIR MONEY. But that would have been far too easy and Re-Turn wouldn't be able to keep the amount of money that they currently do.
Your Ryanair comparison doesn't apply.
New bottles are a mixture of virgin material plus material from the DRS returns. We have modest targets.
"By 2025 PET bottles must contain at least 25% of recycled plastic and by 2030 all plastic beverage bottles must contain at least 30% recycled plastic."
A scam is the intent to deceive people for money. How is it a scam if the "rules" are clearly laid out to all? It's like saying that cheap flights with Ryanair is a scam because they charge you if you don't follow the terms and conditions!
How do they track the x amount of recycles on a Pet bottle before it can no longer be recycled. And don't forget the labels on everything made from 100% recycled this that and the other 100% in the first place is impossible unless it's alloy or metal like aluminum. Should they not be told this is false advertising or misleading at best ? Remember 100% renewable energy labels.
A slight positive update, I noticed last week a Lidl DRS receipt had text saying it can be cashed/used/put on gift card at any Lidl store.
Tried it twice in the last few days and it works fine, so that's Lidl and Tesco that have an 'integrated' DRS system so far.
No.
It's usually some generic fluff that's used. You'd need to be able put a bit of logic on it to read between the lines.
IE weve lost a significant income stream..we need to keep the shareholders/owner happy so are hoping generally charges to cover at least some of the losses. In fairness. The loss of these items from their chain probably save them a significant cost also that they had to incur with pet etc. they'll end up fine and the consumer will continue to get shafted from every angle....the producers will be fine as well. No hit on their profits.....perish the thought.....
RE: Price increases
Has anyone received a letter (from any business) notifying them of a price increase and then stating a specific reason.
IE; We are giving top management a 50% pay raise so your bin charges unfortunately must be increased!
That bit about greed is just nonsense.
Among previous factors in increases was government mandated increases in landfill etc costs.
It has been pointed out repeatedly on the thread that Return themselves list the sale of recyclables as one of their actual sources of revenue. A figure of approx. €15 million was mentioned in the media by bodies representing refuse companies.
You have no credible or coherent response. Somehow you expect Return to pocket these monies, depriving waste companies of those funds without it having ANY impact on the bottom line of refuse companies.
Just because previous increases were due to other factors, it can in no way demonstrate that current increases aren't DRS related. Just nonsense about greed and profits from some fantasy land where refuse companies aren't private companies. There's an argument to be made that refuse collection should be run on a different basis, but in the real world today, they are. If they lose revenue, if costs go up, you can expect prices to go up as well.
What I wrote was correct at the time. The next day I got a letter from the bin company to say their quarterly charge is going up by €3 from 01 March. No mention of DRS in the letter but they do say "Unfortunately, rising costs, largely driven by updated Government Regulations, have made it necessary for us to introduce some changes to the pricing of our waste collection services….. "Additionally Goverment Regulations required that we introduce an incentivised billing system that encourages waste reduction."
I don't believe a word of it, it is just plain greed. The odd thing is that their new version of dynamic pricing punishes those who give them more waste above their arbitary limits. From this thread I got the impression that they wanted more waste not less.
They have increased their price lots of time pre DRS, I remember an amount €18 less than the new one on 01 March.
Yeah, I know. I should have phrased my question "Why were the cans included in this scheme if plastics are the big problem, eh?".
No, that has been said about the PET plastics, not the cans. It's just down to greed.
I don't think that will ever happen because those services are mandatory, where as the deposit return scheme is not, like you can return the bottles or cans or you don't either way the government win. On the schools and GP services they will do just about enough to keep the services from failing, yes we will see a degradation in those services like what we see now where you have to wait 3 - 5 days for a doctors appointment or we will see bigger class sizes but they won't let them fail because then would cause people to protest and hold them accountable.
All the government is doing, despite the numerous pieces of legislation or press releases saying they are improving or going to improve services, is just about keeping the services we need going. I think if they could wash their hands of them especially Health they would do it in a heart beat.
You can forget about ever getting a GP appointment or a school place as well.
Standard FFG practice, promise that after something is introduced that it will get better to try and appease folks and then once they get it in they walk away and wash their hands of it or just keep telling people its coming and never arrives, like the ghost buses. We have seen this with Housing, if you let us build the 10k houses here we promise we will put in the infrastructure to support them and as soon as they get the go ahead you can forget about anything the promised except the 10k houses and absolute gridlock in the area.
And not the only broken promise involved in this.
We were told prior to launch (on a number of radio and TV appearances) by those pushing the scheme that outlets like Dunnes/Tesco and others who provide home deliveries would be bringing in a method of engaging with DRS for their customers who were homebound or who shopped from home. Nadda done in this area absolutly nada. I am sure there were many other falsehoods provided.
I am looking forward to the collection statistics - the full ones - when they are released. It is ironic that the scheme was setup to allow better counting of items collected versus sold, yet we've not been given the full picture on this almost a year in!
I do not think that will happen,” said the junior minister.
More dishonesty to try and justify this scam.
The governments own consolation paper which they published categorically stated that collection companies would increase charges to offset their loses.
I see after he lost his seat in government he made a beeline for the Seanad which he failed to get into as well.
Why always me?
The only person in the country who hasn't had a bin collection charge increase since Re-turn started. And always pushing the media reports on collection rates under the scheme. Curious!
He's been called that a few times on this thread.
I'm alright Jack.
https://m.independent.ie/business/money/wave-of-bin-hikes-feared-as-thousands-of-customers-hit-by-increase-in-collection-prices-this-week/a1393463044.html
Not you, yet, but a significant portion of users have seen bin charges increase as a direct result of this scheme and others will soon follow suit in this calendar year......
Despite this lads musings:
https://www.thejournal.ie/bin-charges-deposit-return-scheme-6426816-Jul2024/
Just like other empty promises that haven't been delivered on with this scheme.
