Deposit return scheme (recycling) - Part 2

OK. It doesn't look like the machine in the picture. Certainly not obvious that it is different machine.

Has anyone tracked those bottles to see where they end up ?

I suspect they probably don't even get "recycled" most of the time.

The "majority" of re-turn's waste gets exported.

So if it does end up in an incinerator or landfill in a foreign country its no longer their problem.

Years ago I remember listening to an interview with a fella who ran a "recycling" plant in Ireland and he didn't even know where the "recycled" waste would eventually end up after it was shipped out of the country.

I wouldn't be surprised if re-turns "recycled" waste ends up in somewhere like China.

I wish the whole project was in serious trouble the vast majority of people don't want it.

Not all I have yet to meet anyone who supports this scam.

At least 90% of Irish people are against it.

I think you would be surprised. Even if you find those 10% who are in support most of them would jump ship in a heartbeat if they had an option to "opt out".

Food for thought.

https://climateintegrity.org/projects/plastics-fraud

Some highlights for me:

The
vast majority of these plastics cannot be “recycled”—meaning they cannot be collected, processed, and remanufactured into new products.9 As of 2021, the U.S. recycling rate for plastic is
estimated to be only 5-6%.10 Despite decades of industry promises, plastic recycling has failed
to become a reality due to long-known technical and economic limitations.

the quality of plastic degrades as it is recycled, limiting both the use of recycled plastic
and its continued recyclability. The fossil fuel-derived chemicals that form the basis of plastic
are vulnerable to heat and other processes used in recycling.24

As the chemicals degrade, they
lose their quality and integrity, making recycled resins unsuitable for many manufacturers.25

The reality is that plastics can only be recycled—or more accurately “downcycled”—once,
rarely twice.26

For this reason, plastics have a linear rather than circular lifespan—when viable,
recycling provides only a brief delay on their inevitable journey to landfills, incinerators,
or the environment.

Finally, the cost of producing recycled plastic is much higher than producing virgin plastic, and
therefore plastic recycling is not economically viable. The recycling process—from collection
to sorting to processing to transport—requires more time, labor, and equipment to achieve
a lower quality and less efficient output than the process of making virgin resin from fossil
fuels.31 The petrochemical companies’ increased production of virgin resins further ensures
that recycled resins cannot compete and that plastic recycling is not economically viable.32
“Advanced recycling” requires many of these same processes, plus additional treatment, making
it even more costly.33 A 2023 study estimated that resins recovered through plastic-to-plastic
“advanced recycling” are 1.6 times more expensive than virgin resins.34 “Advanced recycling”
is also inefficient. Only 1-14% of plastic material that is processed through “advanced recycling”
can be used to manufacture a new plastic product.35 The remaining 86-99% is used to fuel the
advanced recycling system or turned into oil or waste products.

If burning is good enough for these big companies, well I guess I can burn them too.

And this is one of the many reasons this scheme is a complete farce from the of.

The only way you get producers to change how they do things is to hit them in the pocket. If you want to somehow engineer this scheme to change producer behaviour is to stick a deposit of 4 or 5 euro per "object" onto everything. Consumers would drasticilly reduce what they purchased (even if it is only a "deposit") and producers would lose out on revenue forcing them into looking at other methods to distribute their products. Remember, most of the bigger producers have profits in the billions globally. They are not going to change their ways without significant pressure to do so and they have managed to distract from this by the implemention of this type of scheme globally to the point that they actually run the fecking scheme!!

I am not sure why the majority of people don't see this. It's big business yet again getting off scot free in order to protect their profits while the actual problem gets worse and worse (as we have seen in other countries where this scheme is in place - the use of PETS has actually increased)