What a load of piss!
Why once again hammer the consumer and not the producers of these products. I know full well (just as an example) the amount that Buxton Spring churn out every hour and the profit they make.
What now happens to all of us who recycle everything in to our bin at home? Is the dustbin man going to count them in to the lorry on bin day.
As if anyone is going to gather everything up and take back to the supermarket when there's a perfectly good bin doing the same job outside their house!
Not a clue!
Winds me up to, I'm guessing they'll be doing away with rubbish collections soon, we'll either need to take stuff back to shops for a deposit return or to the tip and have to pay per bag being disposed off.
Also, 95% of my paper recycling is junk mail (even though I've supposedly opted out), why the **** are people allowed to put what's effectively litter through my letterbox! I can't even just stick it in the recycling bag, I've got to take out the envelope windows first thanks to our local rules.
When I was a kid there was a deposit scheme on soft drink bottles.
The kids and the homeless used to pick them up, and you never saw a stray bottle lying around.
A deposit scheme works.
Plastic bottle deposits work well in other countries, I see no reason for it not to here.
However I'm 100% with you on tackling / taxing directly the companies that produce products or use plastic packaging rather than reusables or biodegradables.
Why once again hammer the consumer and not the producers of these products.
Because how else is it going to get back from the lazy consumer? These schemes work very well in continental Europe.
Plastic bottle deposits work well in other countries, I see no reason for it not to here.
This, like with most things it's not a revolutionary bit of thinking by the UK.
I know full well (just as an example) the amount that Buxton Spring churn out every hour and the profit they make.
There is a simple one there about not buying any bottled water, just one bottle and use a tap again works all over the world.
Wow, what a bunch of whiners ....
The bag charging scheme lead to bag usage going down by about 90%. So something is needed to break the lazy consumer like the OP.
These schemes work really well in places like Germany ( I go every two weeks BTW)
The cost will be funded by the the drinks industry and costs you nothing ....
Better to have the piles of rubbish, right?
Absolutely brilliant idea and long overdue it works very well in other countries so with the right setup here too it should be great success. Of course there’ll always be those who can’t be bothered to take the returns with them when they go out to the shops so they’ll bin them instead.
Would it not also give income to homeless people? We could become a nation of shopping trolley pushing litter collectors. Seems to work well in the USA & India.
I think it's a great idea
All the talk is about "on the go" littering, so a given that your bottle of water from pret, or wherever will be subject to this. The difficult bit is going to be stuff like multipacks bought from supermarkets and consumed at home. If it effectively costs people 20p to put stuff in their home recycling, or else transport the empties to a recycling machine then the scheme will have zero public support.
So then are multipacks exempt ? What about big bottles ?
WTF has it taken so long? Politicians should be embarrassed for their leaden-footness and lack of action
The kids and the homeless used to pick them up, and you never saw a stray bottle lying around.
We did this as kids too - we'd scour the village to find as many glass bottles as we could. A great source of income in the holidays!
The consumer should be the people that are 'hammered'. The producers are only producing what we consumers want. And overwhelmingly us consumers want our goods available everywhere, to be in pristine condition when we buy them, with attractive packaging with long dates before the goods spoil. So that leads us to plastic packaging, so it is right and proper that us consumers bear the brunt.
Well as somebody who litter picks the Dog and Monkey on Cannock Chase I can only say a brilliant idea, I might become a millionaire!
Did the Monkey yesterday and collected a bag full of rubbish only one week after the last litter pick. Mainly fizzy drink bottles and cans. It would be great if it included gel sachets and their tabs as well.
I'm a bit irked by this, the machines will invariably be in the bloody car park and with 3 kids, 2 of them under 3 I need both hands to stop them getting flattened by some prick doing 30mph in tescos, that's before the 3 year old has told me that he needs a pee Right Now and the new born does a shit that goes from neck to ankle
In a fortnight we generate an entire wheelie bin of mixed glass, metals and plastics, all rinsed and sorted. A trip to the supermarket is already pretty stressful :/
Great idea.
Is it a British disease where we want to change things so long as we don't have to pay for it ourselves? I boils my urine when I'm out in the countryside (or city) and see rubbish everywhere. I guess the manufacturers didn't go out and drop the plastic bottles.....
As consumers we have choice and with choice comes responsibility.
What seems to miss the point though - why have a return scheme for 'single use' bottles and can. Surely the worthwhile opportunity her is for the the stuff the then be re-used.
Up until fairly recently Barr's were still using deposit bottles - 20p a bottle - but the whole point was the bottles were being re-used. I've been in countries where pop bottles have been re-used so many times they're opaque with wear and tear.
With some products the supermarket could be refilling and re-labelling them in house even
I’m a bit irked by this, the machines will invariably be in the bloody car park
Park your car next to the machine, leave kids in the car while you load the machine.
An incentive to get people to engage with recycling and get the containers back into circulation. Seems a good idea to me.
works fine in Norway
all the machines are in supermarkets
Works brilliantly in Sweden and Finland
Fantastic and long overdue in principle. The devil will be in the details of the implementation.
Plastic bottle deposits work well in other countries, I see no reason for it not to here.
This, like with most things it’s not a revolutionary bit of thinking by the UK.
This, evolution innit.
Don't buy bottled water, or buy it and take the bottles back.
At some point the big FMCG’s will change thier plastic bottles and replaced them with recyclable crushable cardboard cartons, which incidentally are cheaper to manufacture..
I was in YO! Sushi last night having supper, I ordered a soda and the guy brought be a drinking straw and not a washable glass.. 🤯🤡
The implementation needs to be such the cost isnt on the consumer, just the reward The returned bottles will be on top of the current recycling efforts.
However if a deposit on plastic bottles is going to hit you hard take a look at how many you are buying and why. Bottled water is costing more than milk in some cases. How can that be right for something that comes out of your tap at home.
A solution to all those who buy bottled water..
Its neat, washable, handy and you may know or have used one in the past.
Science and Rockets it ain’t....
Who actually buys bottled water? I don’t get it.
The kids and the homeless used to pick them up, and you never saw a stray bottle lying around.
We did this as kids too – we’d scour the village to find as many glass bottles as we could. A great source of income in the holidays!
Hectors .....Rammies........ Gless Cheques.....Gingies....
You were gutted when you spotted one in a bush and it turned out not to have it's lid.
This is how it works in Germany:
Most bottles, plastic crates and some glass jars like yoghurts have a refundable deposit.
There is a machine in the foyer of the supermarket that people use before going shopping.
Single bottles and multiples in crates go in the machine. When you're done, you get a voucher for the tills.
If you carried the full bottles home, the empties go back the next time with you. Its just part of the process
Bottles from corner shops not having these machines can be recycled in supermarket machines
No refund glass goes to the bottle bank, as normal
No refund plastic gets kerbside collected, or take it to a recycling spot as you would do with other stuff.
Cardboard is kerbside collected
It works very well.
When I was a kid there was a deposit scheme on soft drink bottles.
The kids and the homeless used to pick them up, and you never saw a stray bottle lying around.
A deposit scheme works.
I was thinking the same - am I going to drag bags of old bottles back to the shop? No I’m going to recycle them at home as usual, but the Scouts or the like might fancy it for a bit of extra cash - or enterprising kids might fancy a bit of freelance work.
Yep, still be throwing them in the bin, just like I do with carrier bags.
A populist policy to try to take attention away from a government failing us.
Why once again hammer the consumer and not the producers of these products. I know full well (just as an example) the amount that Buxton Spring churn out every hour and the profit they make.
Surely its consumer behaviour you want to change. Companies supply product where there is market demand. If you slap a "tax" on Buxton Spring for supplying in plastic bottles you force the price of Buxton Spring up, making an imported product potentially more competitive. If Buxton Spring offer a recycling scheme where they get a rebate on that tax for every bottle recycled I am fairly sure that a significant proportion of consumers would see that as boosting their profits and actively avoid it.
What now happens to all of us who recycle everything in to our bin at home?
Stop buying bottled water and use reusable bottle and the shiny thing above your sink to fill it up and you'll have no cost and the same ecowarrier feeling.
Is the dustbin man going to count them in to the lorry on bin day.
No, but mixed waste recycling is very inefficient and a lot of it is contaminated anyway as people don't use the schemes properly. If they see financial incentive to segregate, clean and recycle waste they will more likely bother to do it right. Carrier bags have shown even tiny direct costs can motivate people.
As if anyone is going to gather everything up and take back to the supermarket when there’s a perfectly good bin doing the same job outside their house!
Either the financial cost / incentive is so insignificant you really don't care, or they will. You can't really be frustrated at paying the penalty and believe nobody will bother to use the refund option, the two are contradictory. FWIW we don't have kerb side glass recycling here, but a very large number of people still take their bottles back even without their being a monetary advantage - afterall the bin is in the supermarket car park and you are making the outbound journey anyway.
I buy bottled water as I don't wish to use tap water in my coffee machine.
I'm also cycnical about this scheme. We already have a good scheme which works, I do recycle all plastic and the council pick it up from outside my house once every 2 weeks, great scheme. Little effort to recycle on my part. Under this scheme I'll have to have a have a seperate bin for the special bottles and then find the time to take them wherever they have to be deposited. I don't go to supermarkets much as we get tesco door delivery. Also I was hearing on the radio that there is a possibility it will spit out tokens for the local shop the machine is sitting outside of. I do not want and I wouldn't like cash either. I would want the money to go straight back into my bank account where it came from. However, I can see the benefits so it will be down to how it's implemented under the next labour government. :op
This is how it works in Germany:
Same here, except for the kerbside collections.
The only stuff that get kerbside collection is that which can't be effectively recycled. Oh, and green waste.
We haven't actually filled a wheelie bin with normal household waste in years. That's on fortnightly collections as well.
We just have a couple of Ikea bags for taking the recycling to the centre whenever we are passing.
I've got a bag of cartons and a bag of recyclable plastic in the back of the car now. It'll take me ~2 minutes extra on the way home and drop them in the recycling bins.
TBH, if we didn't have/use a car it'd be a nightmare. And we'd have to look at changing how we buy stuff.
A populist policy to try to take attention away from a government failing us.
Yup, and as they say, every nation gets the government it deserves.
Can see the return of the bottle drive, great for fundraising for organisations.
I do recycle all plastic and the council pick it up from outside my house once every 2 weeks, great scheme. Little effort to recycle on my part.
Good for you, but self-evidently most people are lazy slobs who are happy to screw up the environment if it saves them 2 minutes. Deposit schemes work fine in civilised countries, so maybe there is a chance they would also work in Britain.
Sure I get this might be of benefit for the stuff consumed outside of the house (e.g. someone buying a can from a corner shop and drinking it there and then) but it's bollocks for home use where there's already a convenient recycling system in place. If I'm provided a recycling bag for cans and someone is paid (presumably via council tax) to collect it then why do I now have to take them back to the supermarket to get a 'refund'? As long as multipacks and 1.5L+ plastic bottles are excluded then fine...
Sometimes I think STW is a great place full of kindhearted, funny, supportive and interesting folk. Then sometimes I think it's half full of MCWCBs who will find something to moan about in everything they read no matter how obvious and overwhelming the benefits.
Bottled water for your coffee machine ffs?! Do you wash your bike with Evian as well?!
The machines will constantly be out of order, full, don't accept that bottle etc etc, I can see it fall8ng on it's arse quite quickly. I don't buy bottled water very often as I get it free and when we run out yes I use the good old tap.
But just to get you all frothing I still buy the 5p carrier bags, reuse them, to take sandwiches to work etc and then i use them as bin bags.
Burn me alive!
What's the obsession with bottled water? Water isn't the only drink that comes in plastic bottles you know!
And there must be a need to hit all the [b]unnecessary[/b] plastic packaging? It's like some dimwit from the govt has been tasked with reducing plastic waste and the only thing they could come up with is "Uh, what do they do in other countries? let's copy that".
The machines will constantly be out of order, full, don’t accept that bottle etc etc, I can
Maybe but hopefully if Sainsbury realise that people are shopping at Tesco because their bottle machine is more reliable they will be incentivised to fix it.
scaled - you'll have to stop producing (wink).
I think this scheme is excellent. Hopefully it will stop this fashion for carrying bottled water around everywhere.
Sick of seeing discarded bottles and cans in hedge rows, road sides, footpaths and bridleways.
Hand in your plastic water bottle at supermarket, get handed a fresh one which has been washed and refilled with chilled water, for nowt. If it works, why not provide a system where you can hand in your old pop bottles and get a new one filled from concentrate for half the price? Pay for it by levying VAT at much higher rates on certain bottled products. Might be able to incentivise healthier behaviour if you make sugar-free fill-ups cheaper.
Deposit schemes will reduce litter - let's face it, people will start bin-diving in your recycling.
Pay councils to provide and maintain fresh water dispensers inside stores and on the street.
There are so many ways to reward and encourage good behaviours.
This is how it works in Germany:
...
Single bottles and multiples in crates go in the machine. When you’re done, you get a voucher for the tills.
The voucher barcode is quite hackable too. Print your own with whatever value you want and stick them to the bottom of something you buy, and hope the checkout staff don't spot it 😉 The number is quite simple to work out. It's just a store ID number, the value (in cents) and 1 check digit. And the bar code is one of the very standard ISO ones. There's no link between the bottle return machine and the POS.
I would expect coin exchange machines etc. are similar.
Bottle return works rather well in many other European nations, and has done for decades in many cases. Maybe that's why UK citizens are against it? 😉
I take a bottle back, I get €0.25 or I bung it in a bin and one of the homeless bin divers will take it back and have enough to buy a "tea" (aka booze).
A great idea.
Works very well in plenty of other countries.
Costs the consumer a pittance.
Whining about this is the very definition of a 1st world problem - get over yourselves & get with the program!