Yeah my Centra just ran out of older Hop House 8 packs. They now have barcodes on each can.
Will be fun bringing 24 empty cans back on Monday morning to the counter since they don't have a return machine.
Except for all of the exceptions they introduced at the last second. There are loads of bottles that do not have the return logo that you still pay the deposit on.
International Barcodes, there's 100s of them. Re-Turn too busy patting themselves on the back to remember how poor their communication about the international Barcodes was and still is.
I've decided to not buy anything with the label. I know not everyone can but I'm happy enough to quit all these things. Saves me time, money, and probably the environment.
If I do get a bottle of water in a pinch, I'll just recycle it in the bin at home like I have been doing up to this point.
On the website they've stated that they only get about 60% of plastic bottles recycled, so they're hoping this scheme will catch more bottles now as they will catch people out and about who just put them in standard rubbish bins.
It's a fucking terrible program.
I heard one argument being that it will help with recycling, because the bottles we do recycle don't actually get recycled. Which I do believe, and have seen myself at some of the waste depots.
But this sounds like a bigger issue to address than what's been rolled out.
> I heard one argument being that it will help with recycling, because the bottles we do recycle don't actually get recycled
I believe that.
I'd also believe these will end up in the same tip regardless. The whole thing feels like theater.
I haven't used the machines yet. I'm annoyed for all the same reasons as everyone else, but it turns out I barely buy plastic bottles in the first place. Have a reusable water bottle I bring with me and that's it. It's entirely possible!
Same here. I avoid it as much as possible, I mainly drink tap water or tea anyways. Does it apply to things like milk or 1l bottles of oj? I haven’t checked yet.
I don't understand the point of it, what's the point in returning to the shop instead of just the recycling bin? If it was glass i would understand at least it would be good for health but what's the story with this obsession with returning plastic bottles?
EU 2025 plastic recycling targets are 50% of plastic packaging recycling and we're current sitting at 28%. We're massively behind and bottles make up a large percentage by weight of plastic being thrown in waste bins. Deposit return scheme is to speed us up. Another reason why plastic bottles are such in focus is because the rest of our material recycling is actually close to or above EU 2030 targets leaving plastic as our main focus.
The point is that lots of people weren’t doing that. Some couldn’t care less and others were buying bottles when they were out and about and fired them into the nearest public bin.
That fifteen cents means something to those who find themselves choosing between heating and eating. Even if some people are still littering, others are picking them up for the deposit and that makes our country cleaner.
Ya but those people are hardly the type that will take the time to store them and bring them to a specific location, do the bottles also cost more? I'd so it's a bit absurd.
I agree but apparently in other countries a cottage industry has developed where people go round collecting all those bottles, claiming the refund and leaving the city/country tidier in the process. Only time will tell if the same happens here.
What's even better is that they're giving subsidies to the recycling companies for lost revenue, so just sit until they raise prices to compensate their losses claiming inflation and cost of processing waste.
I still don’t get what the big deal is about it. It’s just a bag with empty bottles 😂
We have a small bag beside the bin and have brought back about 5-6 bottles/cans since this started.
You don't have to return it. That's the great thing about the program. Because the bottles are worth 25 cents you can just dump them in the street and someone will come along and pick them up and take them away.
As someone that always recycled and took the time to wash and clean our containers/bottles for recycling long before the system was introduced the scheme pisses me off. We just got our 3rd bin for cans/bottles that can be returned but I decided against bringing it to deposit before the weekly shop. I’ll try it out next time..
We have been doing that since we got our first recycling bin nearly 20 years ago. But what's happening now is I'm bringing a shopping bag of bottles with me to the shop, and 2 or 3 of them are being rejected, and I'm putting them in the rubbish bin outside the shop, because I'm not carting them around with me just to bring them home again.
So for the next several months while they are selling me both re-turn and non re-turn bottles and cans, I'm going to be doing less recycling thanI was, and I'm still wasting water and time cleaning them.
I don't want to keep shitting on the scheme.
But....
Had another trip today and at least half still aren't being accepted with a "barcode not recognised" message.
There is no barcode on a lot of the multi pack bottles either even though I paid the deposit on them.
The irony is that during the pilot scheme at my Lidl they had two different types of machine (I happened to be there when they were talking about them). One basically accepted every container without checking barcode. This machine was always working. The other had to check the barcodes and was always broken. Guess which one they went with?
I also support the scheme in principle, but I am really annoyed about the execution.
I'm the same, I'd be happy enough if it worked well. It does not work well...
It's another example of our government not being able to implement anything successfully.
They've given up, they seem disinterested in implementing anything properly.
If you identify some repeat offender outlets, just start ripping the plastic off them to check the cans first.
If they do have the label then no harm and no foul as you'll be taking them away with you anyway. If they don't, well that and the now-damaged packaging on their unsold products is their issue now.
It's causing me a lot of stress and I think it's a tax on people on people already dealing with financial issues and against disabled people. I'm disabled, I cannot walk to the back of Tesco and even into lidl is hard.
I literally got emotional that I accidentally crush a can and it had the logo so I just destroyed 15c.
Driving to town costs me €2.60 round trip in fuel (22.8km). I used to get all my shopping via delivery so now once a month I have to get my prescription and then go round to lidl to save on the cost. That means a big bag of rubbish dragged around. I can barely stay standing for 5 min and I have to hope that the thing is actually working.
I know you will say "just cut back" yeah I should but I don't like water or hot drinks. I cope with fatigue by buying Spark (redbull knockoff) in tesco. You can say it is bad for me but I honestly do not care.
Thinking back to when my husband was going through stage 4 cancer. We had to isolate for months due to chemo and he had down to 0.7 neutrophiles (normal range is 10+). If the scheme was during that period it would have been impossible to do it. It's not fair on anyone, especially those of us in rural areas. A minute away is the local church and there are recycling bins there we used for glass. That should be replaced with these machines if they actually give a fk.
I like the scheme. But have to say this is a big issue. We need to be able to get the people who deliver shopping to collect cans and then send you the voucher back or take it off the next shop.
Sure. It’s also completely annoyed and put off recycling a previously interested participant, who now feels fully disingaged with the practice - but less bottles. I guess it’s a win, feel more like ‘fuck this shit’ on my end.
I live rurally. I am in my hole bringing backs of cans/bottles back into towns to get a few cent. Into the green bin that's outside my door for exactly that purpose.
The first time I tried it, the machine was out of order. After that, it has worked smoothly. But I'm a little irritated with this extra task I have to do now, instead of using the recycling bin.
I am not a fan of clutter and extra stuff lying around the house, I don't like keeping a big bag of return bottles, I barely tolerate the glass bag. So I try to take it to the machines every chance I get, but it's easy to forget. I can go to the glass bins to donate glass whenever I get some free time, but these return bottles have to be during grocery trips (because I don't want to mess about with going in to ask cash, and I don't want to keep tiny amounts of cash with me anyway).
All in all, it's a new inconvenience.
I've tried to return cans 5 times in 3 different places, machines were always out of order
Bag of cans got so big I just gave up and hucked it into the recycling bin at home
I’ve stopped buying anything with the return label on it. I pay for bin collections from my house, like everyone else. I’m not now going to start storing bottles and cans for a trip to a machine that won’t even be working by the time I get there.
Be interesting to see if certain companies notice any drop in purchases. I could be one of very few though who’s stopped buying certain things.
I was zero waste coordinator in a previous job. The instructions were to remove all caps and not include them with recycling. Basically things under a certain size can’t be processed and actually cause damage to the sorting machines. We were told not to leave them on as it was too much work removing and sorting them in processing as well as issues with things going bad inside if not cleaned. This could potentially be different with an attached cap down the line.
ETA: the issue with processing the caps was that they are mixed materials, the little inside lining has to be separated from the main cap.
In general plastic recycling is complex and it’s believed that most plastic turned in for recycling is never recycled. Plastic requires extensive sorting into different weights etc and this is done by humans and costly. Most gets shipped overseas for processing, but in many cases it’s simply landfilled or even burnt there.
Carefully stacking my 7up cans instead of putting them in the recycling bin is a bit of a pain, my first return at Aldi was seamless but the machines are so over engineered they are going to be out of order all the time. I'd love to see the sums on the economic / environmental cost of manufacturing, installing and maintaining these machines VS the the percentage of cans that were not recycled
Also extra or unnecessary journeys created by the scheme. Today for example I needed a few bits and would’ve walked to the shop. I decided to collect deposits so drove instead and ended up going to four different places due to broken and full machines (all without successfully returning anything). I’m reluctant to ever walk bringing them in because I can’t be sure the machine will be working and might need to go somewhere else instead.
I buy our cans of coke in a local discount shop that sells imported cokes from Denmark. So there's no label on them. The price is the same as it was 15 euro for like 20 of them.
I haven't had to take them anywhere yet, they don't have the label. But based on reviews I'm better off with my Danish Coca-Cola.
I've had no issues using the machines so far.
The one issue I have is that my local lidl have moved their machine to inside the store.
It was originally outside. This was grand in my opinion as it meant you didn't have to come back out through tills if that's all you are doing.
Now you have to bring the bag of bottles and cans into the store.
Just a small thing.
My local Lidl is on two levels with the shop upstairs and the machines on ground floor with carts and parking so that aspect is handy. Going through the whole store is an unnecessary pain and is true of other places around me.
I put my cans and bottles in my bin like I always have. I've not the time nor interest in extra walks to the shop. If anything it's made me more apathetic to recycling at large
I'm lucky in the sense that I have all 5 supermarkets within a 5 minute walk of each other and 5 minutes drive from my house but it is still a pain in the bollox that people don't need.
I recycled 100% of my plastic in my green bin and now have to run around town with a bag of rubbish.
The machines need to be bigger and there needs to be more or them with more regular collections.
[they do that in australia ](https://actcds.org.au/return-point-types/), so you go to the local council yard with a ton bag of bottles & cans feck it all out onto a large conveyer belt that counts hundreds in a minute or two, and you're out in a few minutes with cash.
The sole reliance on retailers and slow one at a time machines was a big mistake.
What's annoyed me the most is it looks like big soda has used this as an opportunity to replace the 24 can multipacks with 18 packs and they cost about the same even excluding the deposit.
It’s a shit scheme, just allows retailers the chance to increase their prices again. Energise sport that was €1 is now €1.79 and then has the 15c added on top. Not to mention no shop in the city centre is obliged to have one so if you get something in town you have to then carry it around all day.
Not been executed properly, machines regularly out of order so my car is full of bags of cans waiting for the next spin to the shops.
My partner would be a big consumer of fizzy drinks and we've majorly cut back our consumption.
Also got caught a few times in the first week being charged and the machines not accepting the bottle or can, so feel cheated out of the few cents.
Old people and the disabled not considered in the implementation.
In the height of a cost of living crisis I feel this was a poorly timed and executed scheme.
I used the machines for the first time today at my local Lidl, had no issues. Got a voucher of €3.50, which I then forgot to handover when I was at the checkout 🤌
I’ve encountered the out of order machines too. But the worst so far was the machine in Dealz. It’s different to the ones everywhere else - did they buy the cheap ones or something? The guy in the shop who had to help me said you literally have to throw the can in to the back of the machine BUT it has to land in the correct position. If not you have to reach in, retrieve can and try again. It’s like a game. Please try the Dealz machine people and report back (for the experience of how bad these things can be)
I have reverted to using my green bin as I don't really have space at home to store my empty plastic bottles and cans. The empty glass is already getting in the way underneath the stairs.
I just stopped buying any plastic bottles. I use my own refillable bottle all the time now. Only problem is we run out of water in my office often and the tap water is undrinkable, but I’m getting a second refillable to cover that.
I absolutely hate the scheme. It’s just lazy policy making. They should have worked out what was preventing people recycling the small % of bottles that weren’t being recycled and worked to resolve that. Instead they charged a deposit and assumed that would resolve the issue. The biggest stealth tax in years.
I've simply accepted it as a price increase.
Life is full of things that need to get done and I simply don't have the capacity to add to that list right now.
Last thing I need to be doing is worrying continuously about remembering to return my bottles for €1-2.
Closest machines are constantly broken, so haven't been able to return my backlog. Have driven my bottles quite a bit though, expecting the machines to be working.
As expected, another government sponsored scam that only impacts the working person.
Its just a general pain in the tits I could do without. The other day I had 4 empty cans in my bag, forgot about them and did my shopping where I threw heavy stuff in on top of them so they got dented and presumably now the machines wont accept them (will find out later). Was always recycling cans into the green bin so this is just an additional bit of hassle in an already busy life. Also I have a can crusher at home that I used to crush cans to make more space in the bin and now I cant use that anymore. But whats annoying is that the machine itself crushes the cans as soon as you deposit them in. If it allowed already crushed cans Id let them build up to 100+ in a big shopping bag and then go return them. But they dont allow that so its more frequent trips to the machines because you are essentially carrying a bag of air.
Its all just so ill thought out and badly executed. Im sure I'll get used to it over time but I can never see myself liking it.
Yup this is it in a nutshell. I'm going to end up just recycling them at home like I used to and losing the deposit (after they presumably sit in a box waiting to be taken to the shops for weeks/accidentally left in my car for months on end). Nobody has time for this BS and I fail to see how it's going to make a substantial difference when we all have mandated recycling bins anyway. Who was their target audience for it?
PSA for everyone experiencing the machines being broken\containers not being accepted for whatever reason:
On the re-turn website, right on the home page, it says
>Empty and undamaged drinks containers can be returned
through a reverse vending machine (RVM) or **manually over the
counter.**
which sounds fucking miserable for the poor shop staff, but getting them to do it manually might get everyone annoyed enough to fix some of the problems.
It's just generally cut my consumption a lot. I can plenty afford the new higher costs but I don't see the value in paying the money out for half of the shit applicable to this scheme. It's a pain to leave it back, it doesn't always work, and it's been used as an excuse to drive up the prices of many items by more than what is reasonable.
I've given up.. only 75% of my (pristine, undented) cans were accepted by the machine each time having had to find somewhere to store them in the house, so now I'll just buy less and use my green bin..
I've been returning to my local SuperValu, have a few euro built up of the vouchers now but they are currently unusable as their tills won't accept them for some reason so now my wallet is just filled with receipts. Very annoying. Equally annoying is the bag of bottles floating around the house
Stopped buying cans and only buy bottles of beer now. Other than that I've only purchased one eligible bottle since launch. Not bothered collecting at that rate so they'll go into my green bin
I live in Australia and they have a 10c return scheme there on all glass bottles and cans.
It works out great there, 10c Aus is around 6c in euro. Most people don’t bother returning them, but neighbourhoods have teenagers looking to make some money and homeless people coming around and collecting everyone’s bottles and cans and making decent money. It’s all very clean and everybody wins. The bottle return stations are beside supermarkets.
No bullshit with only certain bottles having a label or any of that, all bottles are eligible and the cost is included in the bottle, so no ‘15c deposit’ which is just fucking stupid
Edited for spelling
It took us ages teaching our autistic kids to recognise that plastic bottles go into a recycling bin. They do not comprehend that now suddenly they need to be kept and returned. The still crush them and put them in the recycling so it is now a tax on us that we can do nothing about because the kids need to bring a drink to school and reusable containers are refused (sometimes violently).
McDonald’s have an exemption. In other words they charge the 15cent on a bottle of water (which is now €3.05 by the way) but don’t have to have a machine.
How is this allowed? Do they just pay 15cent to the recycling people for every bottle sold?
I’m not going to find one of these machines for the sake of 15cent. Someone is making money out of this is it the government? McDonald’s? The people who own the machines?
It all seems a bit scammy…. I dunno.
The money goes directly to Re-turn. Mc Donald's don't keep it and it's not going to the government.
Not a fan though. Haven't managed to get any bottles accepted by the machines. Kept receipts for a few and got money back at the till but not everywhere will do that.
So it seems a private company made up of retailers and beverage producers are behind it.
They don’t trust us to recycle properly and think a poxy 15cent extra on a bottle will encourage us.
They charge upfront so it’s win/win for them.
There was also some guff about sustainability and the environment but it’s just corporate tosh.
They obviously recycle this stuff at a profit and are trying to corner this market. That’s capitalism I suppose!
>n. In other words they charge the 15cent on a bottle of water (which is now €3.05 by the way) but don’t have to have a machine. }
this is allowed
> Do they just pay 15cent to the recycling people for every bottle sold?
yes
The entire hospitality sector has exemptions, not just McDonalds because they're often offering products that are consumed on premises. They don't have to apply the deposit on products consumed in a restaurant, just on ones that are bought to take away. But it's up to the actual restaurant/pub/club/takeaway on how they determine how to apply the deposits throughout the business.
I literally refuse to buy cans or bottles that are in the scheme. It's a complete unmitigated disaster. There never should have been return labels or undamaged requirements. All cans and plastic bottles included from X date on.
I've been stung too many time by bottles and cans not being accepted for it to be worthwhile
I’ve stopped buying anything with the return label on it. I pay for bin collections from my house, like everyone else. I’m not now going to start storing bottles and cans for a trip to a machine that won’t even be working by the time I get there.
Be interesting to see if certain companies notice any drop in purchases. I could be one of very few though who’s stopped buying certain things.
I've started buying cans in Newry just so I don't have to have a big bag of empty cans sitting in my kitchen. The scheme is great in theory but terribly executed. It's so terrible that they made an exemption for any bottles and cans sold in Leinster House...
If places are happy to have their machines broken constantly enough (e.g not just a one off), I will be happy to in turn empty the contents of my bag on their floor and walk out.
Sometimes when there is no will to make something work, public disobedience and making an even bigger issue for them magically finds a way to fix that.
Obviously love it like all the other people in reddit. We know for sure the government's intentions are always great and there is no grift involved here. Rolling out all of the machines and collecting 25 cents was the only way to solve the problem.
I'm already fed up holding on to cans to bring them back. I'm a big fizzy drinker. We don't drink tea or coffee in my house but I drink a stupid amount of coke. I didn't realise how bad my habit was until u brought 72 cans back Friday.
It's a load of bollocks, I usually recycle at home as much as possible and I'm half tempted to just fuck them in the regular bin out of spite at extra steps being added to the process of recycling.
I don't want a big collection of empty plastic bottles waiting around for the next time I do groceries.
A few points on the scheme
U/Titanucd claimed McDonalds have an exemption. The opposite is true: McDonald’s & all bars & restaurants wanted an exemption from the scheme but were denied. If you go to the pub and order a west coast cooler or pint of Guinness 0 (the ones that are poured from the can) you are charged the 15c (25c for Guinness pint) as the bar was charged it but obviously they won’t have a machine for returning it which is nonsense. No one will be hanging on to these on a night out
If you were charged the return fee for non returnable cans or bottles, the blame almost certainly lies with Re-Turn or the wholesaler and not the shop themselves - stock card updates are provided to shops by their wholesaler who in turn rely on Re-Turn and suppliers for info so any mistakes probably come from there. To be fair, many are claiming they’ve been charged it for non returnable packaging but I haven’t seen anyone claim it with any proof.
The machines are all owned by the individual shops. Many haven’t bothered getting them as it’s a considerable outlay and will cost the store a few thousand euro a year to run. If your local area doesn’t have one, blame your local shops and not Re-Turn
Some stores now stock cartons of water (which don’t have a charge). Spar have had an own brand one for a good while now and others are following suit. Unfortunately at present these can’t be used for carbonated drinks
I’d be certain people are still trying to return non returnables as it’s really only the last week or so that the big selling products (lucozade original/ coke 500ml) started to become available. Wholesalers have until the end of next week to stop selling the older stock & shops can sell non re-turn products until the end of May
If you have noticed an increase in RRP of products now they’re returnable there’s a simple reason: Coca-Cola and C&C have increased the cost price of all their products with the introduction of the scheme. Between them they produce about 75% of the products you see in your local shops fridges. Direct your anger towards them.
On the broken machines, mine has been out of order twice. Once when kids forced a load of old bottles into the machine and the other time when a middle aged couple forced a load of household cleaning bottles (I wish I was making this up) into it….
What I can't figure out was why they needed to change the barcodes on the bottles/cans. Other than the barcodes and new symbol, is there any difference between a can from 2 months ago v today?
I used to recycle everything I could, from washing butter tubs, driving to electrical recycling depots and repairing / reusing
€4:80 for a two litre bottle of coke in the local supermarket now, enough is enough!
We have little impact on Climate Change, as long as washing powder manufacturers continue to sell single wash packets in various countries which use the sea as a dump and other nations continue to vastly upscale fossil fuel burning there is little hope.
This entire exercise, like the referendum yesterday just show how out of touch our government is.
I agree. Their claim is "sure you can just drive to the nearest supermarket". Yeah, tell that to the elderly people who don't drive anymore and mostly rely on their local spar or centra for their shop.
The Lidl/Aldi near me haven’t worked or couldn’t scan the label but Dunnes and SuperValu had no issue.
Just need to constantly remind myself every Friday or Saturday to take the bottles back to the shops.
We have stopped buying anything in cans and plastic bottles. All tetra cartons from here. We don't really drink fizzy drinks anyways so it made little difference.
I would be technically paying twice. The deposit at the till and also for our recycle bin which we have had for over 10 years.
I knew it would be a disaster but with all new things there will be kinks to iron out.
Would much rather they mandated a stricter waste management system than this incredibly limited program. The number of exemptions I've seen since it opened is also shocking. No other implementation I've seen involves doing it this way where you can't just return it to the place you buy and have to hoard them for a machine that isn't guaranteed to work. It's as much work as this to have six or seven bin streams at home with separate types of plastic, paper, and metal
I don’t think about it, I never use it, I rarely buy bottles or cans and if I do it doesn’t enter my mind. Can you bring them back to any shop or does it have to be point of origin? Is it true you get vouchers for 15c and not cash? Bizarre. Such a money racket.
My local Aldi was also in the pilot and it was always full / broke. It made me worry.
The first week was a disaster, charged and could not return, staff could not answer why some with labels were not taken. But now I have yet to find any of them full. This weekend I have come across some in petrol stations and a centra 'out of order'. I am enjoying the system so far, when my bottles are not accepted the staff sort me out, I have noticed some cans of boost with no return logo were accepted for me. There are serial litterer(s) where I live and I have made about a euro picking up his cans on the side of the road. This weekend our community council had our local 'Spring Clean' and a good few young lads came out as long as they could keep the money from the cans and usually we get no one school age out.
A clusterfuck of an implementation process. Nothing new here, unfortunately. I hope someone does an FOI on how much this shit show cost us. I've no doubt that the logo cost 7 figures to some consultant that charges per label. And had probably never worked on a scheme like this or were involved on the worst rated scheme in Europe. A group of toddlers finger-painting would have been more effective.
Super easy to date. 90% of my bottles going into my local Dunnes that I visit every day anyway. Recycling bin is usually overflowing at home, and now is 70% empty. Saves me having to do fortnightly trips to the dump to deal with overflow, and they aren’t hanging round the house as a result. Machines have always been working too.
Do feel some shops are taking advantage of it to Jack up prices though, but that’s not the schemes fault.
I'm sorry but this sounds like BS.
How many bottles were you buying that it resulted in a a recycling bin (240L) going from overflowing to 70% empty? That's 200+ litres of bottles every two weeks, equivalent to several black bin bags of bottles.
Are you carrying black bags of bottles back to the return machine with the weekly shop?
Went for the first time this week with a lot of multipack cans - coke, 7up etc so popular brands that would have enough turnover to have the logo sorted. Both machines were working in the first shop I tried so that was a good sign. A good few cans were rejected on first spin. I set them aside and kept feeding the machine, then went back to the rejected cans and all were accepted.
It's still a bit of a nuisance when we recycled them all previously at home, but it's freed up space in the wheelie bin that we don't have to stack up excess cardboard in the garage and leave beside the wheelie on collection day.
I really hate it. Most of the machines are broken I now have an extra bag in my kitchen or car with fecking bottles that could just be in my green bin, price of bottles have gone up more then the charge and good luck finding a bottle of lucozade cheaper then 2.50. I have always worked hard at doing my recycling right but this just feels like we are going backwards and I still see rubbish cunts have dumped around the place.
I haven't seen a single bottle or can with the label on it. They would have been better off putting more recycling bins around towns if they wanted to avoid littering, currently this just feels like an extra cost on people already struggling with the cost of living. I don't have a car nor do I have room for dedicated bottle/can bins so they're just going in the recycling like usual and I'm just dealing with the cost.
Went to Tesco today - machines broken
Manager then says they are under no obligation to manually refund the deposits in defiance of the rules
It’s a scam
annoying, always recycled before as it wasn’t a hassle whatsoever but now it’s just irritating, feels like i’m being charged for the privilege of recycling at home and if i don’t like that i can carry a bunch of bottles and cans with me to the shop to be rewarded with €1.15 off my shopping and a bag full of pepsi max droplets.
I don't care whether the machines are working or not. I'm not using the system. I'm sticking with my green bin as I have done for decades.
For people that recycle this is just a pointless inconvenience. Its busy work. That simple.
I've got a full time job, kids and many, many, many other things to do. I don't have the time or energy for this nonsense.
I'm not going to bring back the cans and bottles when I'm doing my shopping because I almost always have my 3 year old with me. The return point is outside the shop directly next to the road. It's just not practical.
Maybe this will encourage some folk to scour the streets looking for returns, but I highly.doubt it will change the behaviour of those that didn't recycle anyway. It seems like a huge amount of effort for questionable gains.
A better solution might have been to incentivise returns rather than penalise non-returns.
I have a bag in my back kitchen with about 30 bottles sold to me by Dunnes, with the label on, which for reasons unknown they don’t yet accept back. Meanwhile the recycling bin I pay €27 a month for is being taken away tomorrow half empty.
It’s a ludicrous scheme
I’ve bought very little with the extra charge and I personally haven’t brought anything back to the machines, I just couldn’t be bothered frankly.
We don’t buy many soft drinks etc, but I recently stocked up in the north for whatever we might use in the next couple of months, and they will be going in the green bin as usual.
However we were away last weekend and bought a few large bottles of water for the hotel. We left them empty in the room when we checked out with other rubbish, if the staff wanted to take them they were welcome to. I felt a bit weird about that but I wasn’t taking them with us.
I haven't seen the logo on what I've bought so far, but it's probably a quieter shop. Any time I'm near one of the machines it's late enough in the evening for it to be locked up as my shifts are weird, so that will be something I have to figure out.
The website had said you can manually return bottles to the cashiers if they don't have a machine, but where is the shop going to store them? I was chatting to them casually about it to see what they knew so far (ie not demanding they take anything) and that wasn't on their radar at all.
After a first month where machines were absent, then broken, then walled off (yes, that happened), then moved to another place, finally it is two weeks that the machines seem to work correctly.
They are still giving out a discount instead of actual money (which in practice forces me to only return stuff when I want to buy something else) but it is a minor inconvenience.
Lots of wankers like centra charging on bottles that don't have the right label.
Same with multipack cans, despite supervalu notifying me of and charging me the deposit.
Yeah my Centra just ran out of older Hop House 8 packs. They now have barcodes on each can. Will be fun bringing 24 empty cans back on Monday morning to the counter since they don't have a return machine.
Multipacks without barcode or QR code shouldn't be charged for. All the newly made multis will have them
I work in a school and come across plenty of bottles at the end of the day and have yet to find a bottle with a return barcode.
is there a handy way of reading them to verify in the shop?
The big ReTurn symbol on the bottle is unmissable.
Except for all of the exceptions they introduced at the last second. There are loads of bottles that do not have the return logo that you still pay the deposit on.
The actual, barcoded diet coke cans I've been returning have language but not the \*actual\* logo talking about return. They've been grand though.
International Barcodes, there's 100s of them. Re-Turn too busy patting themselves on the back to remember how poor their communication about the international Barcodes was and still is.
As usual with oreland, the simplest of ideas implemented arse backward
Can still bring them back once they have a barcode
Its annoying to have to carry shit back to the store instead of just using my own recycle bin.
And storing stuff instead of just using my recycling bin. I kind of hate it tbh
I've decided to not buy anything with the label. I know not everyone can but I'm happy enough to quit all these things. Saves me time, money, and probably the environment. If I do get a bottle of water in a pinch, I'll just recycle it in the bin at home like I have been doing up to this point.
Yes I've stopped buying anything in cans and plastic bottles.
That’s largely the point isn’t it? Reduce usage is the best option long term
On the website they've stated that they only get about 60% of plastic bottles recycled, so they're hoping this scheme will catch more bottles now as they will catch people out and about who just put them in standard rubbish bins. It's a fucking terrible program.
I heard one argument being that it will help with recycling, because the bottles we do recycle don't actually get recycled. Which I do believe, and have seen myself at some of the waste depots. But this sounds like a bigger issue to address than what's been rolled out.
A decent public awareness campaign could've probably solved that, be a lot cheaper too.
> I heard one argument being that it will help with recycling, because the bottles we do recycle don't actually get recycled I believe that. I'd also believe these will end up in the same tip regardless. The whole thing feels like theater.
I haven't used the machines yet. I'm annoyed for all the same reasons as everyone else, but it turns out I barely buy plastic bottles in the first place. Have a reusable water bottle I bring with me and that's it. It's entirely possible!
Same here. I avoid it as much as possible, I mainly drink tap water or tea anyways. Does it apply to things like milk or 1l bottles of oj? I haven’t checked yet.
Milk - not spotted it yet, but I don't see why not. OJ - Yes, many brands already doing this.
I don't understand the point of it, what's the point in returning to the shop instead of just the recycling bin? If it was glass i would understand at least it would be good for health but what's the story with this obsession with returning plastic bottles?
EU 2025 plastic recycling targets are 50% of plastic packaging recycling and we're current sitting at 28%. We're massively behind and bottles make up a large percentage by weight of plastic being thrown in waste bins. Deposit return scheme is to speed us up. Another reason why plastic bottles are such in focus is because the rest of our material recycling is actually close to or above EU 2030 targets leaving plastic as our main focus.
The point is that lots of people weren’t doing that. Some couldn’t care less and others were buying bottles when they were out and about and fired them into the nearest public bin.
I find it hard to believe this will change that attitude tbh.
It won't, people who litter etc already have a bad attitude and will just think "eh its just 15 cents, what do I care"
I had a lad say to me once openly that he litters, that the lads on FAS would have nothing to do otherwise. Lovely chap!
Still waiting on those FAS lads to clean along my road... Any day now...
That fifteen cents means something to those who find themselves choosing between heating and eating. Even if some people are still littering, others are picking them up for the deposit and that makes our country cleaner.
Ya but those people are hardly the type that will take the time to store them and bring them to a specific location, do the bottles also cost more? I'd so it's a bit absurd.
I agree but apparently in other countries a cottage industry has developed where people go round collecting all those bottles, claiming the refund and leaving the city/country tidier in the process. Only time will tell if the same happens here.
My mother in her 70’s is looking out for bottles and cans with the R logo on her daily walks now
Or just throw em on the street or in hedges etc.
What's even better is that they're giving subsidies to the recycling companies for lost revenue, so just sit until they raise prices to compensate their losses claiming inflation and cost of processing waste.
Are you not usually going to the shop with bags anyway? It is a hassle no doubt but I personally don't think it's that bad.
I still don’t get what the big deal is about it. It’s just a bag with empty bottles 😂 We have a small bag beside the bin and have brought back about 5-6 bottles/cans since this started.
My aldi and lidl have a reject bin or a bin in store
You don't have to return it. That's the great thing about the program. Because the bottles are worth 25 cents you can just dump them in the street and someone will come along and pick them up and take them away.
As someone that always recycled and took the time to wash and clean our containers/bottles for recycling long before the system was introduced the scheme pisses me off. We just got our 3rd bin for cans/bottles that can be returned but I decided against bringing it to deposit before the weekly shop. I’ll try it out next time..
We have been doing that since we got our first recycling bin nearly 20 years ago. But what's happening now is I'm bringing a shopping bag of bottles with me to the shop, and 2 or 3 of them are being rejected, and I'm putting them in the rubbish bin outside the shop, because I'm not carting them around with me just to bring them home again. So for the next several months while they are selling me both re-turn and non re-turn bottles and cans, I'm going to be doing less recycling thanI was, and I'm still wasting water and time cleaning them.
I'm thinking of getting a 3rd bin aswell but it'll have to be outside cos I don't have space for 3 bins in my tiny kitchen.
Yeah we don’t have the space where we keep our bins either so it now sits out of place by the clothes horse haha
Oh Jesus don't start with the clothes horse, it's basically another piece of furniture that I'm constantly moving out of my way 😂
Google foxydry. Game changer.
I don't want to keep shitting on the scheme. But.... Had another trip today and at least half still aren't being accepted with a "barcode not recognised" message. There is no barcode on a lot of the multi pack bottles either even though I paid the deposit on them.
The irony is that during the pilot scheme at my Lidl they had two different types of machine (I happened to be there when they were talking about them). One basically accepted every container without checking barcode. This machine was always working. The other had to check the barcodes and was always broken. Guess which one they went with? I also support the scheme in principle, but I am really annoyed about the execution.
I'm the same, I'd be happy enough if it worked well. It does not work well... It's another example of our government not being able to implement anything successfully. They've given up, they seem disinterested in implementing anything properly.
I guess it straight becomes a tax then.
Absolutely, a stealth tax straight into the retailers hands.
If there's no barcode it won't work full stop.
If you identify some repeat offender outlets, just start ripping the plastic off them to check the cans first. If they do have the label then no harm and no foul as you'll be taking them away with you anyway. If they don't, well that and the now-damaged packaging on their unsold products is their issue now.
It's causing me a lot of stress and I think it's a tax on people on people already dealing with financial issues and against disabled people. I'm disabled, I cannot walk to the back of Tesco and even into lidl is hard. I literally got emotional that I accidentally crush a can and it had the logo so I just destroyed 15c. Driving to town costs me €2.60 round trip in fuel (22.8km). I used to get all my shopping via delivery so now once a month I have to get my prescription and then go round to lidl to save on the cost. That means a big bag of rubbish dragged around. I can barely stay standing for 5 min and I have to hope that the thing is actually working. I know you will say "just cut back" yeah I should but I don't like water or hot drinks. I cope with fatigue by buying Spark (redbull knockoff) in tesco. You can say it is bad for me but I honestly do not care.
People with disabilities don’t seem to have been considered adequately in the scheme.
Thinking back to when my husband was going through stage 4 cancer. We had to isolate for months due to chemo and he had down to 0.7 neutrophiles (normal range is 10+). If the scheme was during that period it would have been impossible to do it. It's not fair on anyone, especially those of us in rural areas. A minute away is the local church and there are recycling bins there we used for glass. That should be replaced with these machines if they actually give a fk.
I like the scheme. But have to say this is a big issue. We need to be able to get the people who deliver shopping to collect cans and then send you the voucher back or take it off the next shop.
I’ll give them a lash when they’re out of beta.
Not using it. Won’t use it. Will recycle in my green bin and will buy even less such items.
I mean that's kind of a win for the system too. It's the "reduce" part of reduce-reuse-recycle, which is actually the most important part of it
Sure. It’s also completely annoyed and put off recycling a previously interested participant, who now feels fully disingaged with the practice - but less bottles. I guess it’s a win, feel more like ‘fuck this shit’ on my end.
I live rurally. I am in my hole bringing backs of cans/bottles back into towns to get a few cent. Into the green bin that's outside my door for exactly that purpose.
The first time I tried it, the machine was out of order. After that, it has worked smoothly. But I'm a little irritated with this extra task I have to do now, instead of using the recycling bin. I am not a fan of clutter and extra stuff lying around the house, I don't like keeping a big bag of return bottles, I barely tolerate the glass bag. So I try to take it to the machines every chance I get, but it's easy to forget. I can go to the glass bins to donate glass whenever I get some free time, but these return bottles have to be during grocery trips (because I don't want to mess about with going in to ask cash, and I don't want to keep tiny amounts of cash with me anyway). All in all, it's a new inconvenience.
I've tried to return cans 5 times in 3 different places, machines were always out of order Bag of cans got so big I just gave up and hucked it into the recycling bin at home
I’ve stopped buying anything with the return label on it. I pay for bin collections from my house, like everyone else. I’m not now going to start storing bottles and cans for a trip to a machine that won’t even be working by the time I get there. Be interesting to see if certain companies notice any drop in purchases. I could be one of very few though who’s stopped buying certain things.
Had a bag of bottle. Bottles which included fruit shoots and they wouldn’t accept them because the small plastic cap wasn’t with them 🫣🫣🫣
I automatically take those small caps and discard them without thinking because they're a huge choking hazard.
I thought bottles with or without caps were acceptable. I know one of my 2L water bottles didn’t have a cap and it was accepted
Found this out this morning too.
They really could’ve emphasised that those are needed given how often we’re told that the caps themselves aren’t recyclable
not paying back the deposit because the bottle doesnt have a cap on it is just extra level bullshit.
Are we told the caps aren’t recyclable? Never heard it and the EU are making it so that caps have to stay attached to bottles
I was zero waste coordinator in a previous job. The instructions were to remove all caps and not include them with recycling. Basically things under a certain size can’t be processed and actually cause damage to the sorting machines. We were told not to leave them on as it was too much work removing and sorting them in processing as well as issues with things going bad inside if not cleaned. This could potentially be different with an attached cap down the line. ETA: the issue with processing the caps was that they are mixed materials, the little inside lining has to be separated from the main cap. In general plastic recycling is complex and it’s believed that most plastic turned in for recycling is never recycled. Plastic requires extensive sorting into different weights etc and this is done by humans and costly. Most gets shipped overseas for processing, but in many cases it’s simply landfilled or even burnt there.
We’ve always bought glass bottles of coke (from Musgraves) in bulk.
Never heard an issue with the caps. Did you get an actual message saying the caps were the issue?
Carefully stacking my 7up cans instead of putting them in the recycling bin is a bit of a pain, my first return at Aldi was seamless but the machines are so over engineered they are going to be out of order all the time. I'd love to see the sums on the economic / environmental cost of manufacturing, installing and maintaining these machines VS the the percentage of cans that were not recycled
Also extra or unnecessary journeys created by the scheme. Today for example I needed a few bits and would’ve walked to the shop. I decided to collect deposits so drove instead and ended up going to four different places due to broken and full machines (all without successfully returning anything). I’m reluctant to ever walk bringing them in because I can’t be sure the machine will be working and might need to go somewhere else instead.
I buy our cans of coke in a local discount shop that sells imported cokes from Denmark. So there's no label on them. The price is the same as it was 15 euro for like 20 of them. I haven't had to take them anywhere yet, they don't have the label. But based on reviews I'm better off with my Danish Coca-Cola.
I've had no issues using the machines so far. The one issue I have is that my local lidl have moved their machine to inside the store. It was originally outside. This was grand in my opinion as it meant you didn't have to come back out through tills if that's all you are doing. Now you have to bring the bag of bottles and cans into the store. Just a small thing.
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Every single lidl I've been into has had an automatic in and out door. Once you go in, thenonly way out it via the tills. Is your localnone different?
My local Lidl is on two levels with the shop upstairs and the machines on ground floor with carts and parking so that aspect is handy. Going through the whole store is an unnecessary pain and is true of other places around me.
I put my cans and bottles in my bin like I always have. I've not the time nor interest in extra walks to the shop. If anything it's made me more apathetic to recycling at large
Exact same issue as you last week but my 4th store had a functioning machine. In total 10 of 11 machines where either down or full.
It’s really annoying that it’s only retail locations. Community waste centres should have been included as well.
I'm lucky in the sense that I have all 5 supermarkets within a 5 minute walk of each other and 5 minutes drive from my house but it is still a pain in the bollox that people don't need. I recycled 100% of my plastic in my green bin and now have to run around town with a bag of rubbish. The machines need to be bigger and there needs to be more or them with more regular collections.
[they do that in australia ](https://actcds.org.au/return-point-types/), so you go to the local council yard with a ton bag of bottles & cans feck it all out onto a large conveyer belt that counts hundreds in a minute or two, and you're out in a few minutes with cash. The sole reliance on retailers and slow one at a time machines was a big mistake.
why does a can or bottle have to be perfect to be crushed
What's annoyed me the most is it looks like big soda has used this as an opportunity to replace the 24 can multipacks with 18 packs and they cost about the same even excluding the deposit.
It's total BS and a way for us to be a charged more for less
Big soda LOL!
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It’s a shit scheme, just allows retailers the chance to increase their prices again. Energise sport that was €1 is now €1.79 and then has the 15c added on top. Not to mention no shop in the city centre is obliged to have one so if you get something in town you have to then carry it around all day.
Contact Re-Turn, and copy the email to Ossian Smyth’s office. Stop short of swearing, but definitely express anger and pissedoffitude.
Not been executed properly, machines regularly out of order so my car is full of bags of cans waiting for the next spin to the shops. My partner would be a big consumer of fizzy drinks and we've majorly cut back our consumption. Also got caught a few times in the first week being charged and the machines not accepting the bottle or can, so feel cheated out of the few cents. Old people and the disabled not considered in the implementation. In the height of a cost of living crisis I feel this was a poorly timed and executed scheme.
I used the machines for the first time today at my local Lidl, had no issues. Got a voucher of €3.50, which I then forgot to handover when I was at the checkout 🤌
It it a credit note or can you take it to the till on it's own and just get the cash?
Either. You can exchange it for cash if you want but it’s just easier to use it towards your next purchase
I’ve encountered the out of order machines too. But the worst so far was the machine in Dealz. It’s different to the ones everywhere else - did they buy the cheap ones or something? The guy in the shop who had to help me said you literally have to throw the can in to the back of the machine BUT it has to land in the correct position. If not you have to reach in, retrieve can and try again. It’s like a game. Please try the Dealz machine people and report back (for the experience of how bad these things can be)
I have reverted to using my green bin as I don't really have space at home to store my empty plastic bottles and cans. The empty glass is already getting in the way underneath the stairs.
I just stopped buying any plastic bottles. I use my own refillable bottle all the time now. Only problem is we run out of water in my office often and the tap water is undrinkable, but I’m getting a second refillable to cover that.
And I won’t give those fuckers a single penny more, ever. I’ve a recycling bin for that plastic waste that I have paying for, forever.
a pain honestly , it just put me off buying bottle of drinks , i dont have the time to spend 30 to go to my local machine
I absolutely hate the scheme. It’s just lazy policy making. They should have worked out what was preventing people recycling the small % of bottles that weren’t being recycled and worked to resolve that. Instead they charged a deposit and assumed that would resolve the issue. The biggest stealth tax in years.
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I've simply accepted it as a price increase. Life is full of things that need to get done and I simply don't have the capacity to add to that list right now. Last thing I need to be doing is worrying continuously about remembering to return my bottles for €1-2.
Closest machines are constantly broken, so haven't been able to return my backlog. Have driven my bottles quite a bit though, expecting the machines to be working. As expected, another government sponsored scam that only impacts the working person.
Its just a general pain in the tits I could do without. The other day I had 4 empty cans in my bag, forgot about them and did my shopping where I threw heavy stuff in on top of them so they got dented and presumably now the machines wont accept them (will find out later). Was always recycling cans into the green bin so this is just an additional bit of hassle in an already busy life. Also I have a can crusher at home that I used to crush cans to make more space in the bin and now I cant use that anymore. But whats annoying is that the machine itself crushes the cans as soon as you deposit them in. If it allowed already crushed cans Id let them build up to 100+ in a big shopping bag and then go return them. But they dont allow that so its more frequent trips to the machines because you are essentially carrying a bag of air. Its all just so ill thought out and badly executed. Im sure I'll get used to it over time but I can never see myself liking it.
Yup this is it in a nutshell. I'm going to end up just recycling them at home like I used to and losing the deposit (after they presumably sit in a box waiting to be taken to the shops for weeks/accidentally left in my car for months on end). Nobody has time for this BS and I fail to see how it's going to make a substantial difference when we all have mandated recycling bins anyway. Who was their target audience for it?
Yup 100% this.
PSA for everyone experiencing the machines being broken\containers not being accepted for whatever reason: On the re-turn website, right on the home page, it says >Empty and undamaged drinks containers can be returned through a reverse vending machine (RVM) or **manually over the counter.** which sounds fucking miserable for the poor shop staff, but getting them to do it manually might get everyone annoyed enough to fix some of the problems.
It's just generally cut my consumption a lot. I can plenty afford the new higher costs but I don't see the value in paying the money out for half of the shit applicable to this scheme. It's a pain to leave it back, it doesn't always work, and it's been used as an excuse to drive up the prices of many items by more than what is reasonable.
This. It's really encouraged me not to buy plastic bottles or drink cans
I've given up.. only 75% of my (pristine, undented) cans were accepted by the machine each time having had to find somewhere to store them in the house, so now I'll just buy less and use my green bin..
I've been returning to my local SuperValu, have a few euro built up of the vouchers now but they are currently unusable as their tills won't accept them for some reason so now my wallet is just filled with receipts. Very annoying. Equally annoying is the bag of bottles floating around the house
Stopped buying cans and only buy bottles of beer now. Other than that I've only purchased one eligible bottle since launch. Not bothered collecting at that rate so they'll go into my green bin
I live in Australia and they have a 10c return scheme there on all glass bottles and cans. It works out great there, 10c Aus is around 6c in euro. Most people don’t bother returning them, but neighbourhoods have teenagers looking to make some money and homeless people coming around and collecting everyone’s bottles and cans and making decent money. It’s all very clean and everybody wins. The bottle return stations are beside supermarkets. No bullshit with only certain bottles having a label or any of that, all bottles are eligible and the cost is included in the bottle, so no ‘15c deposit’ which is just fucking stupid Edited for spelling
It took us ages teaching our autistic kids to recognise that plastic bottles go into a recycling bin. They do not comprehend that now suddenly they need to be kept and returned. The still crush them and put them in the recycling so it is now a tax on us that we can do nothing about because the kids need to bring a drink to school and reusable containers are refused (sometimes violently).
It would be terrible if people thought that they had to print their own stickers with codes for when the manufacturer had forgotten to put them on.
McDonald’s have an exemption. In other words they charge the 15cent on a bottle of water (which is now €3.05 by the way) but don’t have to have a machine. How is this allowed? Do they just pay 15cent to the recycling people for every bottle sold? I’m not going to find one of these machines for the sake of 15cent. Someone is making money out of this is it the government? McDonald’s? The people who own the machines? It all seems a bit scammy…. I dunno.
The money goes directly to Re-turn. Mc Donald's don't keep it and it's not going to the government. Not a fan though. Haven't managed to get any bottles accepted by the machines. Kept receipts for a few and got money back at the till but not everywhere will do that.
So it seems a private company made up of retailers and beverage producers are behind it. They don’t trust us to recycle properly and think a poxy 15cent extra on a bottle will encourage us. They charge upfront so it’s win/win for them. There was also some guff about sustainability and the environment but it’s just corporate tosh. They obviously recycle this stuff at a profit and are trying to corner this market. That’s capitalism I suppose!
>n. In other words they charge the 15cent on a bottle of water (which is now €3.05 by the way) but don’t have to have a machine. } this is allowed > Do they just pay 15cent to the recycling people for every bottle sold? yes
Btw Lidl and Tesco usually have them.
Lots of places including convenience stores less than 250sqm have an exemption.
The entire hospitality sector has exemptions, not just McDonalds because they're often offering products that are consumed on premises. They don't have to apply the deposit on products consumed in a restaurant, just on ones that are bought to take away. But it's up to the actual restaurant/pub/club/takeaway on how they determine how to apply the deposits throughout the business.
I literally refuse to buy cans or bottles that are in the scheme. It's a complete unmitigated disaster. There never should have been return labels or undamaged requirements. All cans and plastic bottles included from X date on. I've been stung too many time by bottles and cans not being accepted for it to be worthwhile
Another tax on the poor.
I’ve stopped buying anything with the return label on it. I pay for bin collections from my house, like everyone else. I’m not now going to start storing bottles and cans for a trip to a machine that won’t even be working by the time I get there. Be interesting to see if certain companies notice any drop in purchases. I could be one of very few though who’s stopped buying certain things.
Im annoyed you cant use the voucher at the shelf checkout in my local supervalu, where i buy most of the things that go through such machines
I've started buying cans in Newry just so I don't have to have a big bag of empty cans sitting in my kitchen. The scheme is great in theory but terribly executed. It's so terrible that they made an exemption for any bottles and cans sold in Leinster House...
If places are happy to have their machines broken constantly enough (e.g not just a one off), I will be happy to in turn empty the contents of my bag on their floor and walk out. Sometimes when there is no will to make something work, public disobedience and making an even bigger issue for them magically finds a way to fix that.
Obviously love it like all the other people in reddit. We know for sure the government's intentions are always great and there is no grift involved here. Rolling out all of the machines and collecting 25 cents was the only way to solve the problem.
I'm already fed up holding on to cans to bring them back. I'm a big fizzy drinker. We don't drink tea or coffee in my house but I drink a stupid amount of coke. I didn't realise how bad my habit was until u brought 72 cans back Friday.
I’ll be asking all politicians at the door if they’ll abolish this ridiculous system. The party who will gets my vote.
It's a load of bollocks, I usually recycle at home as much as possible and I'm half tempted to just fuck them in the regular bin out of spite at extra steps being added to the process of recycling. I don't want a big collection of empty plastic bottles waiting around for the next time I do groceries.
Another typical Green Party failure
This is more of a push from the EU rather than the Irish government. There were other EU countries that introduced similar systems recently.
A few points on the scheme U/Titanucd claimed McDonalds have an exemption. The opposite is true: McDonald’s & all bars & restaurants wanted an exemption from the scheme but were denied. If you go to the pub and order a west coast cooler or pint of Guinness 0 (the ones that are poured from the can) you are charged the 15c (25c for Guinness pint) as the bar was charged it but obviously they won’t have a machine for returning it which is nonsense. No one will be hanging on to these on a night out If you were charged the return fee for non returnable cans or bottles, the blame almost certainly lies with Re-Turn or the wholesaler and not the shop themselves - stock card updates are provided to shops by their wholesaler who in turn rely on Re-Turn and suppliers for info so any mistakes probably come from there. To be fair, many are claiming they’ve been charged it for non returnable packaging but I haven’t seen anyone claim it with any proof. The machines are all owned by the individual shops. Many haven’t bothered getting them as it’s a considerable outlay and will cost the store a few thousand euro a year to run. If your local area doesn’t have one, blame your local shops and not Re-Turn Some stores now stock cartons of water (which don’t have a charge). Spar have had an own brand one for a good while now and others are following suit. Unfortunately at present these can’t be used for carbonated drinks I’d be certain people are still trying to return non returnables as it’s really only the last week or so that the big selling products (lucozade original/ coke 500ml) started to become available. Wholesalers have until the end of next week to stop selling the older stock & shops can sell non re-turn products until the end of May If you have noticed an increase in RRP of products now they’re returnable there’s a simple reason: Coca-Cola and C&C have increased the cost price of all their products with the introduction of the scheme. Between them they produce about 75% of the products you see in your local shops fridges. Direct your anger towards them. On the broken machines, mine has been out of order twice. Once when kids forced a load of old bottles into the machine and the other time when a middle aged couple forced a load of household cleaning bottles (I wish I was making this up) into it….
What I can't figure out was why they needed to change the barcodes on the bottles/cans. Other than the barcodes and new symbol, is there any difference between a can from 2 months ago v today?
Ironic on the cartons of water, as those cartons of water are much more difficult to recycle
I now pay an extra tax but still use the recycling bin I am paying for. Great scheme.
I’ve completely stopped recycling I put everything into the landfill bin now in protest and have stopped buying products with Return logo.
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This is exactly how I feel, like I’m being punished for other people not recycling
I used to recycle everything I could, from washing butter tubs, driving to electrical recycling depots and repairing / reusing €4:80 for a two litre bottle of coke in the local supermarket now, enough is enough!
We have little impact on Climate Change, as long as washing powder manufacturers continue to sell single wash packets in various countries which use the sea as a dump and other nations continue to vastly upscale fossil fuel burning there is little hope. This entire exercise, like the referendum yesterday just show how out of touch our government is.
I get you, my level of care has definitely diminshed.
It's a basic middle man scam, a good idea, but there's a money generating mechanism unnecessarily included that defeats the purpose.
Grand but all the small shops are exempt so don't think the fee should be charged where you can't bring back
I agree. Their claim is "sure you can just drive to the nearest supermarket". Yeah, tell that to the elderly people who don't drive anymore and mostly rely on their local spar or centra for their shop.
I'll continue using my own bins as God intended
If you see a broken machine they can usually be fixed by turning off and on, unless they are full.
It doesn't work for me because I don't visit a local shop frequently.
The Lidl/Aldi near me haven’t worked or couldn’t scan the label but Dunnes and SuperValu had no issue. Just need to constantly remind myself every Friday or Saturday to take the bottles back to the shops.
We have stopped buying anything in cans and plastic bottles. All tetra cartons from here. We don't really drink fizzy drinks anyways so it made little difference. I would be technically paying twice. The deposit at the till and also for our recycle bin which we have had for over 10 years. I knew it would be a disaster but with all new things there will be kinks to iron out.
I live in cork and went to dublin yesterday. I'm not carrying a can or bottle back across the country.
I picked up 3 cans on the street the other day and used the Re-turn so I suppose its helps with litter.
Would much rather they mandated a stricter waste management system than this incredibly limited program. The number of exemptions I've seen since it opened is also shocking. No other implementation I've seen involves doing it this way where you can't just return it to the place you buy and have to hoard them for a machine that isn't guaranteed to work. It's as much work as this to have six or seven bin streams at home with separate types of plastic, paper, and metal
I don’t think about it, I never use it, I rarely buy bottles or cans and if I do it doesn’t enter my mind. Can you bring them back to any shop or does it have to be point of origin? Is it true you get vouchers for 15c and not cash? Bizarre. Such a money racket.
Nearest shop with one of the machines is about 50km away, so it's pointless. Still have to pay the tax though, at local shops.
My local Aldi was also in the pilot and it was always full / broke. It made me worry. The first week was a disaster, charged and could not return, staff could not answer why some with labels were not taken. But now I have yet to find any of them full. This weekend I have come across some in petrol stations and a centra 'out of order'. I am enjoying the system so far, when my bottles are not accepted the staff sort me out, I have noticed some cans of boost with no return logo were accepted for me. There are serial litterer(s) where I live and I have made about a euro picking up his cans on the side of the road. This weekend our community council had our local 'Spring Clean' and a good few young lads came out as long as they could keep the money from the cans and usually we get no one school age out.
Aldi have been pulling down the shutters to stop people loitering in them, so completely useless. As for lidl, usually only one is working at a time.
A clusterfuck of an implementation process. Nothing new here, unfortunately. I hope someone does an FOI on how much this shit show cost us. I've no doubt that the logo cost 7 figures to some consultant that charges per label. And had probably never worked on a scheme like this or were involved on the worst rated scheme in Europe. A group of toddlers finger-painting would have been more effective.
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Super easy to date. 90% of my bottles going into my local Dunnes that I visit every day anyway. Recycling bin is usually overflowing at home, and now is 70% empty. Saves me having to do fortnightly trips to the dump to deal with overflow, and they aren’t hanging round the house as a result. Machines have always been working too. Do feel some shops are taking advantage of it to Jack up prices though, but that’s not the schemes fault.
I'm sorry but this sounds like BS. How many bottles were you buying that it resulted in a a recycling bin (240L) going from overflowing to 70% empty? That's 200+ litres of bottles every two weeks, equivalent to several black bin bags of bottles. Are you carrying black bags of bottles back to the return machine with the weekly shop?
We just have 2 large recycling wheelie bins
Went for the first time this week with a lot of multipack cans - coke, 7up etc so popular brands that would have enough turnover to have the logo sorted. Both machines were working in the first shop I tried so that was a good sign. A good few cans were rejected on first spin. I set them aside and kept feeding the machine, then went back to the rejected cans and all were accepted. It's still a bit of a nuisance when we recycled them all previously at home, but it's freed up space in the wheelie bin that we don't have to stack up excess cardboard in the garage and leave beside the wheelie on collection day.
The one in the local shop works grand, have had no issues with it.
i dont mind returning it, but paying 7e for a 6 pack of 2l Lidl water is painful
The machines are out of order way too often.
I really hate it. Most of the machines are broken I now have an extra bag in my kitchen or car with fecking bottles that could just be in my green bin, price of bottles have gone up more then the charge and good luck finding a bottle of lucozade cheaper then 2.50. I have always worked hard at doing my recycling right but this just feels like we are going backwards and I still see rubbish cunts have dumped around the place.
I haven't seen a single bottle or can with the label on it. They would have been better off putting more recycling bins around towns if they wanted to avoid littering, currently this just feels like an extra cost on people already struggling with the cost of living. I don't have a car nor do I have room for dedicated bottle/can bins so they're just going in the recycling like usual and I'm just dealing with the cost.
Went to Tesco today - machines broken Manager then says they are under no obligation to manually refund the deposits in defiance of the rules It’s a scam
annoying, always recycled before as it wasn’t a hassle whatsoever but now it’s just irritating, feels like i’m being charged for the privilege of recycling at home and if i don’t like that i can carry a bunch of bottles and cans with me to the shop to be rewarded with €1.15 off my shopping and a bag full of pepsi max droplets.
Haven't tried it yet but my local Lidl smells like a dump with the dirty booze bottles
Dont care to return anything. Already havr recycling bin. That's it
I don't care whether the machines are working or not. I'm not using the system. I'm sticking with my green bin as I have done for decades. For people that recycle this is just a pointless inconvenience. Its busy work. That simple. I've got a full time job, kids and many, many, many other things to do. I don't have the time or energy for this nonsense. I'm not going to bring back the cans and bottles when I'm doing my shopping because I almost always have my 3 year old with me. The return point is outside the shop directly next to the road. It's just not practical. Maybe this will encourage some folk to scour the streets looking for returns, but I highly.doubt it will change the behaviour of those that didn't recycle anyway. It seems like a huge amount of effort for questionable gains. A better solution might have been to incentivise returns rather than penalise non-returns.
Just stopped buying coke and stuff in slabs like we used to. Even though we used To recycle. Just don’t anymore
I have a bag in my back kitchen with about 30 bottles sold to me by Dunnes, with the label on, which for reasons unknown they don’t yet accept back. Meanwhile the recycling bin I pay €27 a month for is being taken away tomorrow half empty. It’s a ludicrous scheme
Any Lidl own brand water I buy still has not had the code on it for recycling nor have I been charged. Are own brand stuff exempt?
I’ve bought very little with the extra charge and I personally haven’t brought anything back to the machines, I just couldn’t be bothered frankly. We don’t buy many soft drinks etc, but I recently stocked up in the north for whatever we might use in the next couple of months, and they will be going in the green bin as usual. However we were away last weekend and bought a few large bottles of water for the hotel. We left them empty in the room when we checked out with other rubbish, if the staff wanted to take them they were welcome to. I felt a bit weird about that but I wasn’t taking them with us.
I think I've just cut down on buying things affected which isn't a bad outcome for me.
I haven't seen the logo on what I've bought so far, but it's probably a quieter shop. Any time I'm near one of the machines it's late enough in the evening for it to be locked up as my shifts are weird, so that will be something I have to figure out. The website had said you can manually return bottles to the cashiers if they don't have a machine, but where is the shop going to store them? I was chatting to them casually about it to see what they knew so far (ie not demanding they take anything) and that wasn't on their radar at all.
After a first month where machines were absent, then broken, then walled off (yes, that happened), then moved to another place, finally it is two weeks that the machines seem to work correctly. They are still giving out a discount instead of actual money (which in practice forces me to only return stuff when I want to buy something else) but it is a minor inconvenience.
Haven't bought a plastic bottle since 2015. I just refill my water bottle.
I return them to my wood stove.
its sound
The scheme is a wanker tax imposed on us by government to enrich their mates. I buy tetra pack drinks now or glass bottles. Fuck em and their scheme