MSE News: Government plans 'deposit' scheme to...

GwylimT

Pollycat wrote: »

It's not the 'carrying a few empty bottles in a bag'.
It's the storing of the 'few empty bottles' until you go back to that same shop next time.
It's the remembering to take those 'few empty bottles' with you next time you know you'll be passing the particular shop you bought them from.

You may not mind having bags of empty bottles in various bags ready to take back to various shops kicking around your house but some people may mind.

It is a really poor excuse for laziness. If you can fit a couple of milk bottles and a bottle of squash in your house, you can flatten them down to the size of one bottle and take them to the shop. How do you even get to a shop if your memory is that bad?!

Ken68

Early days, but if it gets to be a lot of trouble,I will just stop buying items that need returning.
That will be the shops worry then.

Pollycat

GwylimT wrote: »

It is a really poor excuse for laziness. If you can fit a couple of milk bottles and a bottle of squash in your house, you can flatten them down to the size of one bottle and take them to the shop. How do you even get to a shop if your memory is that bad?!

It really isn't an excuse at all - poor or not.

I get to the shops just fine.

FTR - I don't buy drinks from shops in single use bottles anyway.
In fact I don't buy bottled water or fizzy drink full stop.

rmg1

At the risk of this turning political, the government want us all to recycle more plastics but don't (in my area) provide a lot of places to do it. If they want us to recycle plastic, then surely they should make recycling a little bit easier.
I shop in Asda (other supermarkets available every week and we buy milk in 4-pint plastic cartons. There is no recycling facility there for plastic.
In fact, I can't think of anywhere that would recycle them in my local area.
As for the long-life milk in the cardboard containers, none of us like it.

My daughter's drinks for school come in those plastic-coated (I think) cardboard containers with the straw. If she brings it home, it goes in with the rest of the cardboard, the plastic straw goes in the bin. Again, this is purely due to the fact that there is nowhere anywhere near us (as far as I know) that recycles plastic.

I understand people saying flatten any plastic bottle before storing them which is a fair point and would make storage easier taking them to recycling.

Just one question from me, how far is reasonable to travel to get to a recycling centre to recycle these things?
Are we talking 5 miles? 10? 20?

I'm lucky, I have a car. But, as has been mentioned before, what about those on public transport?

Stompa

GwylimT wrote: »

It is a really poor excuse for laziness. If you can fit a couple of milk bottles and a bottle of squash in your house, you can flatten them down to the size of one bottle and take them to the shop. How do you even get to a shop if your memory is that bad?!

For me, the main problem is that it will probably mean additional journeys on foot to dispose of the bottles if I want a refund. Many people will have a lot more than a couple of milk bottles and a bottle of squash.

It's also not clear to me whether it will be possible to flatten the bottles, since the barcodes will need to be read by the reverse vending machine. All the (admittedly few) examples I've seen of people actually using such machines show them putting in unflattened bottles, and I think the machine itself then compacts them to take up less space.

zerog

Based on the way it works in other countries, you can take bottles to any shop to refund them, as long as the refunding shop also sells the same product.

The public transport argument makes no sense, just like the car argument. You had to bring the bottles, with the liquid in them, home (by public transport or car) in the first place, so how difficult is it to bring them back?

Hopefully supermarkets will find a way to process refunds for those who get their groceries delivered.

The only real issue is that households will need to find an extra space to store any bottles which can be refunded. Not a big deal.

Personally, I don't buy plastic bottles of drinks so it won't affect me.

telemarks

I must admit I think this is a terrible idea for two reasons:

• It will be the death of the kerbside collection
• It totally fails to address the main problem, the amount of plastic not recycled

On kerbside collections:
In affluent areas, you can imaging gangs of anti-wombles each recycling evening searching the bins for 22p treasure and randomly strewing any "worthless" recycling over the pavements. After a few weeks of this, everyone will stop putting out recycling.
In less affluent areas, in place of one recycling lorry a week, there will be many more trips in the car to the supermarket to queue up with the engine running at the recycling anti-vend machines in the windy corner of the carpark.
I imagine the police will also be pleased to have a new crime reports "someone stole my recycling".

On the real problem:
Metal tins and plastic bottles are already well covered with a kerb/pavementside recycling scheme that on the whole works.
However the real problem is all the plastic that can't be recycled, stuff contaminated with food, black trays that can't be seen on the belts of recycling facilities and mixed materials such as cups, packaging with mixes of plastic and cardboard.

So instead of ruining what works already, I suggest the Govt. should be focusing on working with manufactures to:

• Promote alternatives and ruthlessly reduce the amount of plastic used - a "Plastic tax" on plastic manufactures might work well
• Legislate against mixed use materials, and perhaps enforce colour coding of the types of plastic, so each type of plastic CAN be recycled easily

Pollycat

zerog wrote: »

Based on the way it works in other countries, you can take bottles to any shop to refund them, as long as the refunding shop also sells the same product.

Yes, but can we rely on our Government to make a sensible decision on how the scheme will work (if it is even introduced)?

But - supposing it does work like that - someone has bought a bottle of water in shop A and has then caught public transport or driven to a place that doesn't have shop A.
Wishing to be 'green' and recycle the empty bottle, does that person trot into every shop he/she comes across in case they happen to sell the identical product?
Before giving up, taking it home and remembering to take it out with them next time they're going to be near a shop that might or might not sell the identical product.

zerog wrote: »

Personally, I don't buy plastic bottles of drinks so it won't affect me.

Neither do I.
Everything that can possibly be recycled in my house is recycled.
I check every new product I buy before deciding whether it can be recycled or has to go in the black bin.

The thing is - the people who just chuck away empty bottles or cans once they've drunk the contents aren't likely to be the people who think about recycling responsibly.
So losing however many pennies deposit will not matter one jot to them.
These are the people who drop a 5p or 10p coin and can't be bothered to pick it up.

Ken68

As for the plastic in the seas and oceans, how on earth does it get there.
Does every ship dump stuff overboard whenever.

Stompa

zerog wrote: »

Based on the way it works in other countries, you can take bottles to any shop to refund them, as long as the refunding shop also sells the same product.

That sounds like a recipe for disaster, I had assumed that any shop would accept any bottle.

zerog wrote: »

The public transport argument makes no sense, just like the car argument. You had to bring the bottles, with the liquid in them, home (by public transport or car) in the first place, so how difficult is it to bring them back?

For me, it would mean additional journeys on foot. So it would certainly be a nuisance.