Deposit return scheme (recycling) - Part 2

There were probably strongly worded patronising condescending letters going around during the Emergency about how easy they were having it compared to The Great War and how yous can't handle a tiny bit of inconvenience. There's a high horse to be ridden in every generation.

Hilarious when someone who obviously never lived through the Emergency brings it up in 2025.

Thanks for the laughs though. It is After Hours after all.

Next time will your frame of reference be the Famine or Dublin in the rare oul times? Ah shure didnt Bill Cullen and me uncle go around collecting empty glass bottles barefoot to bring back for penny apples.

To return to Re-turn. People are allowed to complain about the inconceniences of Re-turn, giving how much we are spending on kerbside collection from waste companies and to ask questions about where the collected waste goes and what will happen with the tens of millions they have collected since the scheme went live.

So we're snowflakes for pointing out the flaws in this DRS?

The bigger picture is how its setup to give a quango complete control over 54,000,000+ euro of our money per year plus whatever they get for flogging the raw materials.

Trying to crowbar in the emergency is bizarre stuff. Maybe you could have sorted out the emergency with massive generalisations about the real world, social commentary and snowflakes. We're debating everything about the scheme, the supposed environmental benefits and where the money goes. Not just the use of RVMs.

It's an indication a side is losing the argument if they start calling the other side "snowflakes".

But nothing, and the support is false as they know no better.

Totally agree.

The issue I have with the attached caps thing is that it could have been done at any stage in the past two decades and was not at all reliant on DRS.

Like a lot of things already outlined on this thread, there was no attempts made at all to improve on what were the previous collection methodologies.

What we have ended up with is a scheme that totally absolves the producers and the LA's of everything with absoloutly no motivation on the producers to reduce completely the amount of plastic in circulation.

Producers, by the way, some of whom whose annual profits are in the billions globally.

I suppose whether you can call it a scam or not depends entirely on your perspective.

If you believe the pushing of responsibility for dealing with these issues from the state through it's LAs onto essentially a private sector organisation with fairly lax reporting requirements absolving the producers, most of whom make billions annually of pretty much any responsibility to reduce the amount of plastic they use to the citizens directly is okay then you wouldn't call it a scam. If you believe the above is scammy behaviour then you'd call it is scam.

Similarly if you believe this scheme is overall better for the environment than any alternatives that may have been in play but weren't improved upon you wouldn't call it a scam but if you didn't well......

Thanks,great idea.I would never have thought of that.

Ditto.

If it's a scam it's a pretty unusual scam because it's all playing out in plain sight.

The terms and conditions of the scam and it's operations to were all laid out in a Statutory Instrument under the aegis of the Waste Management Act.

The Bank of Ireland provided a business loan of €27.5m to finance the establishment of the scam.

All the Board members and the CEO responsible for the management of the scam are of good repute with excellent track records in their chosen fields.

On a daily basis the scam is conducting business with a large number of reputable companies involved in manufacturing and retail many of them MNCs.

I could go on but you get my drift.

"But what won't happen is people switching over in massive numbers to anything that makes their lives even a little bit inconvenient."

Oh yeah: blame the consumer.

People buy what's on the shelf. People don't have a great deal of choice around how the items they need are packaged.

Producers invented single use plastic to sell more. Producers decided to move from reusable glass for dairy and beer to single use plastic, aluminium and glass. Producers have developed all kinds of processed foods that are packaged unsutainably. None of this was consumer driven.

I am by no means anti-producer, but producers come under very little pressure for finding solutions to the problems they created.

The more vague and high level you like to keep everything the more scammy it sounds.

I personally believe - the only way that this scheme actually does anything beneficial for the environment is if the deposts are all set at higer levels. One or two euro per item at least.

At the end of every calendar year, the producers are fined the amount of unclaimed money and the total of unclaimed money goes towards some plastics from the sea recovery type scheme/charity.

Obviously the horse has bolted with respect to trying to do anything of benefit with the "old" methods - but that would have been the most common sense area to start with.

A simpler version would be a straight levy, not a deposit. Start small (maybe less than DRS) but signpost the increases, so producers are incentivised o find alternatives before they ever get to €1 or €2 in say 10 or 15 years time No need for a quango either, just legislation and enforcement by say Revenue.

I like your idea also of fining producers for each unreturned item (or say kg of PET. This would be compatible with kerbside collections, community waste facilities, etc..

These ideas place all of the onus on producers to tackle the core issue: reduce single use plastic, they also force responsibility to encourage recycling.

But it's not what we have, nor even close.

This whole scheme is deceptive and has been from the very start………..

Have a read of the page here to spot the deception.

https://re-turn.ie/

Citizens have been told that there were certain flaws with the scheme that would be looked at (home deliveries was one) - Never happened.

You don't feel scammed by an organisation/scheme claiming to be positive for the environment when everywhere this scheme has been rolled out has seen an increase in the use of plastics?

That's sound then - good for you.