Here in Ireland just last year the government introduced a plastic bottle return places these are vending machines that take your plastic bottles and cans then give your the money back you paid in tax when buying them. this is my grand daughter using the machines for bottles we save and gave her this money she puts into a piggybank then when shes got enough saved she buys a phone tablet ect ect. every week she can make around 50 euros from the bottles people save for her;
My grand daughter Ryleigh aged 8 using the machine
Most of the plastic bottles in my area are collected every 14 days and then sent to a recycling plant that turns them into garment fibre and other useful products. one thing I will say about my area, I never see any discarded bottles just dumped in the gutter or on the pavement.
From February 1st 2024, Ireland will introduce a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for plastic bottles and aluminium cans. The Irish Government has appointed Re-turn to operate the new scheme, which is a key element of Ireland’s Climate Action Plan.
When you buy a drink in a plastic bottle or can that feature the Re-turn logo, you pay a small deposit in addition to the price of the drink. When you return your empty, undamaged container to a Re-turn participating retailer, you get your deposit back in full. DRS is a crucial step in the journey to a circular economy, where bottles and cans can be returned, recycled and become a new product again.
The Scottish government were going to introduce a bottle return system in 2023 but it keeps being delayed. The latest date is sometime in 2027. Our local Aldi has a bottle return facility in the car park which has been unused for 2 years. Why has Scotland’s deposit return scheme been delayed? - BBC News
A very enterprising young lady, Feey. Good for her.
Here we have a bag to put plastic, tins & foil in, it gets collected every week, with other recycling, card, paper & glass. Those go in 2 other boxes. Non recycling goes in a black bin.
Our machines give you a voucher you use at Woolies supermarket unless you open an account. If you go to the Unanderra place where they deal with bigger loads they transfer cash into your debit card (not a credit card for some reason)
None give you cash.
There are still people who check the recycle bins for bottles and cans on bin day
the machines here are in local supermarkets like lidl dunnes and tesco you place the bottle on like a conveyor belt it then scans the code as the bottle goes in thats how it recognises the amount to give back. you can then do your shopping and give in the receipt and they deduct it from your shopping bill. because of my grand daughters age they just give her the amount in cash from the till,.
Do you get more money or less money if you return the empty plastic bottle without its stupid cap that won’t come off, that gets in the way when pouring and is sometimes impossible to get back on the screw top?
regardless of the cap on or off opened or closed it scans the barcode and gives you back the amount you had to when buying the bottle. i agree the stupid way they have the caps opening nowadays is hard to close them again properly.
We’ve had that system of cans and bottles with refundable deposit as the only system for years. It has helped to reduce litter in the streets and in certain areas it can be worthwhile collecting those still lying around .
Yep, nice, but I was just thinking most people here would not bother with it, but there are some who might want to raid your recycle bin when you put it out for the binman.
That’s brilliant Feey and I can see that if they used that idea here it would stop the amount of plastic bottles washed up in the river Don whenever there is a flood…
We must not get carried away with all this plastic recycling though…The energy required to recycle plastic might cost the environment more than leaving the bottles to float away into the North sea…
Just saying…
Sorry to pee on peoples bonfires…
Recycling plastic does feel a bit like green-washing. It is interesting to reflect how effective the ban on free supermarket plastic bags has been. I remember empty, used bags flapping in the wind all along so many farm fences, caught on the barbed wire. It was awful with literally millions of bags strewn across the countryside. A few years after the ban and you hardly saw any. The question was only why did it take so long to introduce this ban?
Perhaps this is needed for liquid containers. Both plastic and plastic lined cardboard are bad for the environment and expensive to recycle. Maybe we simply need to move back to re-usable glass bottles?
Dangle a carrot like giving some kind of reward and the people will bend over backwards to recycle their stuff, but they don’t realise that the ten pence you get back will have already been added to the cost of the product.
Cut out the middle man and just give your kids more pocket money…
Don’t ban the people from using plastic, ban those that make the stuff if you really want to make a difference.
That is not true,it was never a secret as to the costs but it’s a damn sight more than 10c, 10c goes back to the returner, another 10c goes to the company handling the return and paying out the customer, and about 20 cents for the recycling costs etc.
The cost have been well publicised, this is Victoria’s:
Australia is the first continent to be fully covered by Container Deposit Schemes. (That’s the advantage of having your own continent). Th results have been nothing short of amazing.
