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Plastic bottle return scheme on the way

Renewable energies, sustainability, recycling and everything in between
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Hairy-Joe
Posts: 1567
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2021 3:33 pm

Plastic bottle return scheme on the way

#1

Post by Hairy-Joe »

Looks like a plastic bottle return scheme is on the way.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland ... -1.4733609

I've seen a similar scheme work in Germany. There's machines in the supermarkets that you put your clean bottle into. It scans the bottle and reads the barcodes. If it's a bottle that was bought there, it will give a receipt. You go to the till along with your shopping and receipt and you get the money off your shopping. Last time I used it (2019) it was 25c a bottle.

Hopefully it's not fecked up here when it's brought in. If it's something like the German scheme it will be grand. The only hard part was keeping track of the various bottles from various supermarkets.
JONJO THE MISER
Posts: 523
Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:00 pm

Re: Plastic bottle return scheme on the way

#2

Post by JONJO THE MISER »

This should of been done decades ago.
We really need to do something about reducing plastic.
Soft drinks are the biggest culprits,.could some places not come up with a refill station for your soft drinks, like have a 2 litre glass bottle and refill with the soft drink of your choice each time.
CelticRambler
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Joined: Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:19 pm
Location: Central France

Re: Plastic bottle return scheme on the way

#3

Post by CelticRambler »

Hairy-Joe wrote: Fri Nov 19, 2021 11:31 pm I've seen a similar scheme work in Germany.

If it's something like the German scheme it will be grand. The only hard part was keeping track of the various bottles from various supermarkets.
I've seen the German scheme not work, for the very reason you point out: it's excessively cumbersome to keep track of which bottles should go where, and is more related to customer loyalty than recycling. The proof (some of it, at least) is sitting above my head in one of the presses in my campervan - two bottles bought in a German supermarket on my last trip, intended to be returned, but now I can't remember where I got them.

If you're the kind of person who buys a load of stuff in the same shop all the time, chances are you have a recycling bin within easy reach. If not, then as a customer, the deposit is just factored in to the price, like the practically invisible eco-tax on electrical goods, which only funds the export of our pollution to third world countries.

Despite opposition from some local authorities (who have a vested interest in harvesting the more valuable plastic waste) the better solution is expanding across France: a non-discriminatory compactor that'll take bottles of any brand or nationality and give you money for them. And guess what? That encourages people to go looking for recyclable plastic in hedges, gutters and bins, to pick it up and cash it in. They might be the kind of person who usually swaps their dole money for a baggie, but they swap their clean-up voucher for a bread roll and a pack of crisps. Not a bad arrangement.
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Del.Monte
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Re: Plastic bottle return scheme on the way

#4

Post by Del.Monte »

We need to have a national conversation about plastic recycling - much better and cheaper than actually doing something about it, and shure don't we have the wonderful Repak organisation anyway.
'no more blah blah blah'
Hairy-Joe
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Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2021 3:33 pm

Re: Plastic bottle return scheme on the way

#5

Post by Hairy-Joe »

I think it's a case of "Just do it" rather than talk about it. The plastic bag tax was a case of "just do it" and that worked out quite well as there's not a whole lot of plastic bags littering the place
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Frank
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Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2021 7:11 am
Location: Ireland

Re: Plastic bottle return scheme on the way

#6

Post by Frank »

We're going to be charged more for this, I'd say it's just a matter of them figuring out how.
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