Some do, some don't.
Shoppers 'to be charged 20p on plastic bottles & Metal Cans under return scheme
- Thread starter chaparral
- Start date
If its those grey type they do. Those are recyclable. You can even hand in ones for other supermarkets. Apparently they melt them down and make more.
It keeps getting better, so with my new choice of 'continue to recycle but with more hassle' or 'continue to recycle but pay a fine', if I chose to continue my kerbside recycling, the 'fine' I effectively pay to do so won't even go to some sort of fund used to improve recycling or litter collecting or anything, it'll just go straight into the supermarkets back pocket.
Caporegime
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Where is the 20p introduced into the chain?
Manufacturer? Distributor? Retailer?
They will pay additional vat on the 20p and corporation tax on the profits whoever gets to keep it.
I'm recycling that way anyway sorting into separate bins with no refund, so paying extra and getting a refund is just an extra step.
Sometimes easy to forget the absolute miracle of plastic bottles, how valuable they could have been to people throughout ancient history, lightweight and much more flexible than glass, yet we often just use them once and throw them away.
Right up to I'd say the mid-late 80's as a young kid I still remember returning glass bottles to the corner shop and getting 10p back, so if anything it's a return to what was once quite common all over the UK.
Sometimes easy to forget the absolute miracle of plastic bottles, how valuable they could have been to people throughout ancient history, lightweight and much more flexible than glass, yet we often just use them once and throw them away.
Right up to I'd say the mid-late 80's as a young kid I still remember returning glass bottles to the corner shop and getting 10p back, so if anything it's a return to what was once quite common all over the UK.
From German Wikipedia, because actually I didn't know either...
The entire point was to reduce the use of single use plastics and bottles. In Germany single use went down by over 50% when the scheme was introduced. The majority of beer bottles are now re-used. So yes the driver really was an environmental one. The other side effect I already mentioned, there is zero / glass plastic litter.
Decide how important those outcomes are to you.
I really don't give a monkeys if I spend 4 EUR more a month on plastic bottles or glasses if I don't take them back and trash them. But I try to be a good German
and do my bit, since everyone else does. And you see the results day to day outside.
Caporegime
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Plastic is a miracle and literally helped save billions of lives.
Think of all the syringes, medicines, iv drips, etc. All the plastic tubing.
It should be banned from retail use and only allowed in medical realms.
India has banned plastic for instance. Well plastic bags completely because they were just destroying their rivers, etc.
The rest all gets collected by the poor for money. The problem is nobody here is poor enough to collect rubbish for money because the government hands out free housing and benefits to them.
For example that programme on TV 11 kids and counting or whatever it's called. Complaining they don't get enough help and house is too small. Well didn't this realisation not hit you after having 3 kids never mind 11?
Litter is everywhere and it's a disgrace. Absolutely filthy some stretches of road are. We need to do more but I was already recycling plastic bottles and aluminium cans. This just makes it harder for me to do as I have to go out of my way to do it.
One benefit of returnable deposit payable on bottles, etc means that it does give another option for people to gather in bulk and return for profit, could even lead to less waste and rubbish on the streets in the UK. Not a bad way for kids to get extra pocket money, etc.
Plenty of people will still forgo the return and just litter anyway, maybe this will be more of an incentive for others to pick it up for profit.
Plenty of people will still forgo the return and just litter anyway, maybe this will be more of an incentive for others to pick it up for profit.
From German Wikipedia, because actually I didn't know either...
The entire point was to reduce the use of single use plastics and bottles. In Germany single use went down by over 50% when the scheme was introduced. The majority of beer bottles are now re-used. So yes the driver really was an environmental one. The other side effect I already mentioned, there is zero / glass plastic litter.
Decide how important those outcomes are to you.
I really don't give a monkeys if I spend 4 EUR more a month on plastic bottles or glasses if I don't take them back and trash them. But I try to be a good German
The scheme makes sense because the bottles are reusable. In the U.K. they not which is why the people who are advocating for curb side collection are making very valid points.
It’s very inefficient if the bottles are not reusable. Loads of labour, infrastructure etc for bottles to just be trashed at the end of it. Utterly pointless process when they can be collected from your house. General waste normally goes through a material recovery process to pull out all the metal and plastic for recycling anyway. Most of the litter around my way is not bottles or cans, it’s still bags, crisp packets, and fast food containers.
This makes so much more sense if the German system is fully implemented with reusable bottles.
I really don't give a monkeys if I spend 4 EUR more a month on plastic bottles or glasses if I don't take them back and trash them. But I try to be a good German
This is the next flaw for this system as far as the UK goes in replacing existing kerbside schemes - even people conscious about recycling might not be bothered enough by the small amounts of money to always bother doing it, you're still relying on a sense of community spirit that plenty in this thread have clearly suggested doesn't exist here.
If people can't be bothered to put plastic bottles in a different bin at home, being fined £5 for not taking them back to the shop instead isn't going to turn many people into avid recyclers in my opinion.
I still personally think you'd make a much bigger impact to recycling in the UK by legislating that a) all local authorities have to offer kerbside recycling and b) all local authorities have to accept all recyclable materials. This would be two significant improvements that could make a real difference to people who want to recycle but currently are actually restricted by the process not being as easy as it could be.
This deposit scheme as I see it is backwards - it improves virtually nothing for people who don't recycle and it makes recycling more difficult for those who already do and it's clearly less convenient for the end user in virtually all circumstances, otherwise you wouldn't need to hold people's money to ransom to get them to do it.
Whilst I might not have the answers at the tip of my tongue, there surely must be a way of targeting poor recyclers to encourage them to improve, rather than this approach with so much 'collateral damage' to people who have been happily and conveniently doing their recycling for years now.
In the end it might just drive people to buy products that can't be recycled at all, so don't incur a deposit scheme.
So instead of that tinned cat food, which ends up in the current recycling bin, it gets replaced by pouches, which just end up in landfill.
Proper big brain stuff here!
Unless they plan to increase the price of everything for 20p per unit.
So instead of that tinned cat food, which ends up in the current recycling bin, it gets replaced by pouches, which just end up in landfill.
Proper big brain stuff here!
Unless they plan to increase the price of everything for 20p per unit.
Soldato
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This is currently only in Scotland.
Wales has said no.
England is looking to see what happens in Scotland.
Thousands of shops will have reverse vending machines (RVM) and any qualifying item can be returned to any RVM.
items do not need to go to a "recycling centre".
items do not need to go back to the shop you bought them from
existing products sold before the scheme starts will not be able to get a "refund".
items sold in Scotland will have unique barcodes that trigger the RVM to give a refund.
online retailers are required by the law to collect qualifying items from the customers although at this time no details have been agreed about how this would actually work.
it's being done in Scotland because recycling rates are very low there compared to Wales. littering is a problem and it is expected that if the litter itself becomes valuable it will a) not be thrown away in the first place and b) collected for the 20p refunds.
Wales has said no.
England is looking to see what happens in Scotland.
Thousands of shops will have reverse vending machines (RVM) and any qualifying item can be returned to any RVM.
items do not need to go to a "recycling centre".
items do not need to go back to the shop you bought them from
existing products sold before the scheme starts will not be able to get a "refund".
items sold in Scotland will have unique barcodes that trigger the RVM to give a refund.
online retailers are required by the law to collect qualifying items from the customers although at this time no details have been agreed about how this would actually work.
it's being done in Scotland because recycling rates are very low there compared to Wales. littering is a problem and it is expected that if the litter itself becomes valuable it will a) not be thrown away in the first place and b) collected for the 20p refunds.
This type of scheme is intended to boost recycling rates by encouraging those who don't currently recycle to do so.
It also going to boost car usage to return this stuff to somewhere
Soldato
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if you go to the shops just to return cans and not buy anything, yes it will.
but who the hell does that?
Puts hand up, am sure i will
It is but this scheme is because you apparently need a kick in your balls to encourage other people who don't recycle.
Soldato
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why does this boost car usage? you go to the shops and buy stuff, some of it has a deposit charged, when you've emptied it, you put it to one side, and next time you go to the shops you put the containers in a machine which gives you back cash for each item. It's 20 ******* p an item. If you drive to the shop to get back a couple of quid at most you're an idiot.