Plastic Bottle Recycling
It seems that we are moving towards a system ( in England) whereby when you buy anything in a plastic bottle or can a deposit will be added to the purchase price and you will be expected to reclaim that deposit by returning the empties to the supermarket/designated place. Those of you who are familiar with travelling in Germany will be aware that this system has been in place for many years although rather interestingly the Government seem to be using Norway as an example. Perhaps Kj will have more info on this? I don't know about anyone else but I have mixed views on this system. As far as I am personally concerned every bottle/can I buy is always sent for recycling via my local council. So arguably I could be inconvenienced by a change of system although I am sure I could live with it. Will the system encourage those that currently are, shall we say, slapdash in their recycling habits to recycle? Councils across the Nation have quite complicated recycling setups, do these become redundant and new larger centres built instead? It is in all our interests to recycle but will it work. One positive I can see is that it might engage a new generation of youngsters to collect bottles and cans to earn a bit of pocket money as we used to do years ago with Corona bottles!!!!
David
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I seem to recall, that as a 5yr old, I hit upon a magnificent scheme at a local fair whereby I nicked empties from the back of the stall, ran round the front with them, and got a penny for each one.
I had a sharp eye for a profit in those days!
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When I walk along one of the roads into our village I see cans and plastic bottles in the ditch, thrown from passing car windows. At present all the main roads and motorways edges are littered with tons of rubbish I can't see this "throw away" attitude changing even if it costs a bit more to purchase bottles and cans. If you're off on holiday at Easter you'll see all the debris clogging our hedges and road sides, it seems worse this year.
Glass bottles always got returned to pubs and shops for a few pence, but the vast amount of modern plastic stuff and cans people are buying now either goes into recycling or just gets dumped. I can't see them returning anything for a few pence.
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Brue
I tend to agree that those that can't be bothered now won't be bothered in the future. It will be those of us that are responsible with our recycling now that will be inconvenienced.
David
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All our tins and bottles are sent for recycling, and as we get through a fair bit of mineral water, it will as you say be a pita. Especially if you are not allowed to crush them before you introduce them to one of those machines they showed on TV. Those folks were certainly putting them in whole. However, if it stops our verges being littered with the things I am all for it. Perhaps a large deposit on coffee cups and MD's packaging should also be considered.
Great for those with young kids though. It will keep them amused on the supermarket visits. Ours used to love feeding bottle (glass) into those in France, when we were on holiday.
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It will I think depend on the size of the deposit. Which I think should start at 20p.
Our Tesco used to have a machine that you could feed glass and aluminium cans. In return it gave you club card points. It seemed to spend much of its time jammed up. So hopefully any machines will be much more reliable. I don't think folk will be amused if they cart a load of uncrushed bottles for recycling only to find it out of action.
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It will I think depend on the size of the deposit. Which I think should start at 20p.
Still cannot see it having true effect. If I was walking about with bottled water etc I would retain the bottle, as with any other waste, until I returned to the car or found a bin. Those that simply discard such will not carry to a recycle facility for 20p. I would not either as I would discard either in nearest bin or, if available, a recycle bin.
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I'm guessing that anybody of my generation will be a bit cynical about the current issue regarding plastic packaging of foodstuffs. During our childhood, we've all probably taken the empty pop bottles back to the shop to boost our pocket money, and our parents always washed and put the empty milk bottles out for the milkman to collect. We took a shopping bag with us when we went to the corner store although some bigger shops would provide you with a paper carrier bag which had string handles.
I recently watched a short clip on a news item whereby numerous shoppers at a supermarket unwrapped all the goods from their plastic packaging and left it behind in the store for them to dispose of.
I do think that the retailers ought to take more responsibility for this problem rather than load it on to the consumer.
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When I was a young lad I used to walk along Hastings seafront looking for empty bottles to take back to the shop. Only problem was that shops could only return a certain number to the supplier. This meant they wouldn't always accept them. Otherwise they were out of pocket having to refund the money which they could not get back. Also coca cola bottles for example came in different designs, some clear glass, some with a green tint, whilst others had the name in white. You had to get to know which shop sold which type or they wouldn't take them. I wonder how the plastic scheme will work and if you will have to take them back to the same shop they came from.
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Funnily enough we've just returned from Germany visiting our son and experienced this. We thought it was a great idea. Son and wife collect the bottles in large shopping bags and take them to be cashed in regularly, in fact whilst we were there they reclaimed 11 euros back which is helpful to them as they are on a tight budget. We both agreed that this should happen in the UK, happy to pay slightly more to faciltate this.
The downside we noticed was that in the towns, there appeared to be a large number of people, mainly vagrant/homeless types rooting around in public bins to try and find them to cash in which is such a shame that they feel it necessary to do so.
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To introduce such a scheme would be very costly and I wonder who the Government expect to pay for it? Whilst imposing an extra tax on such containers would be relatively easy to deal with by retailers I am not so sure they could be expected to foot the bill for the necessary infrastructure. That means the Government itself would have to cough up the money. But would they be willing to do that because as soon as the scheme was in action it would be a zero benefit game for them as people would get back what they put in. Would it not be better to introduce a relatively small tax, say 5p a container, and use that money to invest in total recycling schemes whereby all rubbish is collected as one and mechanically sorted at the recycling facilities. There is an element of confusion by many members of the public as to what can be recycled which probably means more goes to landfill than is necessary. I suspect, as a country, we have been a bit over hyped by Blue Planet where the real problems are thousands of miles away and won't be improved by the UK making things more complicated?
David
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Oneputt
Thanks for the second link in particular which perhaps needs passing on to Michael Gove!!! One question I have is whether in Germany they have as highly developed recycling household collections as we do in the UK? Perhaps because of the Pfand system it is not as everyone gets used to taking bottles back to the supermarket rather than but them out for the bin man? I hadn't quite appreciated that they have so many reusable plastic bottles in Germany. I don't think that has even been thought of as part of the current discussions. Be interesting to know how the Norway system differs from Germany?
David
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We used this system in Germany years ago. Quite simple when going shopping take bag with empty bottles, (we all have to have bags nowadays) feed bottles into machine get money out, go in shop buy more bottles. What's a pita about that.
When we first went to Germany it was something similar with glass bottles, we used to buy our soft drinks and beer in a 'Getranke' shop, these were usually along side the supermarket. Buy in a crate, beer in one soft drinks in another, take crate back next time shopping and replace.
IMO some folk in this country are just lazy, its these folk that need educating and if this scheme works elsewhere then why not here.
We need to educate them. Kids will always be happy to collect and take back if it means money in their pockets, but it needs parents/teachers/scouts groups etc to encourage them to do so.
The biggest plus of this surely is that less plastic will get into our waterways and oceans
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We used this system in Germany years ago. Quite simple when going shopping take bag with empty bottles, (we all have to have bags nowadays) feed bottles into machine get money out, go in shop buy more bottles. What's a pita about that.
The pita would be taking the bottles when we pay for household collection of recyclable waste as part of our near £2k rates
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But you are going to the shops anyway not like you are having to go to a special place out of your way and you get money back on them.
Rates will always have to be paid irrespective of this scheme, in fact this might stop them going up you never know
We have collections for garden waste, plastics, paper, cardboard etc all covered by our rates but there are times that we have too much or large cardboard boxes which we then take to the recycle centre, which is also funded by our rates. Can't see why this new scheme should not pay for itself.
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As we live in a rural area and don't make many supermarket trips it just seems like a waste of time and effort as our weekly roadside recycling works well at present. Our glass milk bottles get collected by the milkman and just a few cans and plastic bottles go in the recycling each week.
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The Norwegian system
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I don't think there would be any advantage for me as I am already a conscientious recycler. Our recycling goes into a pink sack and I am well aware that some neighbours don't ever put out a pink sack!
Reading the link provided by Oneputt it seems the likes of Aldi, Lidl and Coca Cola don't cooperate in such schemes in Germany, would it be the same here?
David
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We are conscientious recyclers and currently have 4 recycling bins and 1 paper recycling bag by our back door and our council appear to be very good at recycling and have invested heavily.
Supposing I end up having to recycle tin/glass/plastic by returning it to store etc, where is the shortfall in council revenue (made from recycling) come from? Presumably the Council Tax will go up and the massive investment councils made in recycling will be lost....Good one George! More wasted money.
I don't believe it will have any effect at all on the litter situation.
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I wonder how much tonnage of waste is involved looking at plastic bottles versus all types of plastic packaging? We have mountains of plastic waste at present which can't be recycled, it would be good to see plans to reduce the whole lot.
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But you are going to the shops anyway not like you are having to go to a special place out of your way and you get money back on them.
That assumes that the shops that I use buy into the scheme of course. There is no benefit for recycling around here as folk already recycle.
Rates will always have to be paid irrespective of this scheme, in fact this might stop them going up you never know
It will make no difference as the LA will still collect tin cans, paper, glass and, of course, plastics including bottles as many will not bother to return bottles
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It will make no difference as the LA will still collect tin cans, paper, glass and, of course, plastics including bottles as many will not bother to return bottles
Could make a nice little earner for a charity or two though. We already have one that collects our glass bottles every two weeks. They could add on plastic ones. If enough folk aren't bothered about returning them, it could be a profitable venture.
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