Will you be using reverse vending machines?

I started taking materials to a local recycling point before we had recycling bins and I’m happy to support any initiative that means that we recycle more. For the time being I will continue to use my recycling bin because there is no local Sainsbury.

I wonder about the practicalities of Sainsbury’s bottle collecting machines. If a few people accidentally post bottles containing some old milk the store will soon stink. 🙁

I would prefer to just continue to sort my recycling waste carefully and put it in the recycling bin because I don’t need any incentive to recycle. For me it is a high priority that councils are told to standardise what can be put in bins, across the country. Packaging also needs to be marked very clearly as to whether or not it can be recycled.

This needs to go one step further than simply giving back 5p on each can or bottle. In many other European countries, shoppers pay a deposit on each can or bottle, which is itemised on the receipt separately from the price of the liquid inside it. When consumers feel they are paying a deposit, they feel the need to recover that deposit so they return their empty cans or bottles to the supermarket. In some countries such as Lithuania, supermarkets’ deposit return machines scan the barcode on the product to verify that it’s a product that the supermarket sells or has sold in the past.

This has been going on for decades in some countries. I remember seeing the Love Parade in Berlin many years ago, where revellers had discarded their empty beer bottles in the street. You might perceive this as a litter problem, but not in Germany. A homeless guy then came along with a shopping trolley, putting all the empty beer cans in it, to return them to the supermarket to get €0.08 for each bottle. No doubt he then spent the rebate voucher on food in the supermarket. Littering the street with empty bottles is effectively the same as littering the street with €0.08 coins.

The downside of these deposit schemes is that they don’t work well across borders. I like to buy a year’s supply of beer in other European countries around once per year and bring it back to the UK. In Germany, I would have to pay a €0.25 deposit on each can (as opposed to €0.08 on bottles which are too heavy to transport in large quantities). Therefore I usually buy my German beer in Belgium, which doesn’t have a deposit scheme. This impedes free movement of beer within the EU’s single market, so I’m surprised the EU hasn’t done anything about it.

Cannae wait for this to appear at my local Tesco! Especially with the litter louts near me leaving empty cans and bottles in the park every day. Either hubby will clear them as he regularly does, and make a few pennies this time, or the louts now will. 🙂

George Martin please check your English. It’s not “I think adding incentives ARE a good way of…” but “I think adding incentives IS a good way of…” — if there is only one way it’s IS, several ways would be ARE.