‘Huge disappointment’ as UK delays bottle deposit plan and excludes glass
‘Huge disappointment’ as UK delays bottle deposit plan and excludes glass
Scheme for plastic bottles and cans put back to 2027 while environment minister says glass recycling ‘unduly’ complex
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The thing with bottle deposits is: it really only annoys the people who generally already do the right thing anyway.
Here in the Netherlands, we expanded bottle deposits to cans and small bottles last year. A 15-25 cent deposit.
It’s causing all sorts of problems: deposit machines are breaking down in record numbers and there’s too few of them. A lot of places sell cans and bottles, but a lot of them don’t take returns. This means that it’s a giant hassle to return the cans and bottles, so a lot of people now just see it as a price increase and don’t bother with the return.
The deposit also causes MORE litter in the streets. How? Because we’ve effectively incentivised the homeless and drug addicts to break open trash bins and search for cans and bottles. They break one open, tear out the trashbag, dump the contents and take the bottles. Which attracts rats, since they leave the rest. My city now regularly looks like a garbage dump.
Meanwhile, some call it a succes because ‘there’s fewer bottles and cans on the streets’, while conveniently ignoring literally all the other trash that now gets dumped on it.
I’d honestly vote today to abolish the deposit scheme. Sounds good on paper, but in practice I’m only seeing downsides.
The thing with bottle deposits is: it really only annoys the people who generally already do the right thing anyway.
I recycle everything possible (including tetrapacks and pill tray thingies) so all this is doing is taxing me for doing the right thing or causing me extra hassle dragging everything down to the local bottle return machine that may or may not be working.
I'm exactly the same. This has recently come in in Ireland and it is annoying the piss out of me. It's a tax with no upside as my recycling hasn't increased in any way.
Tetrapak aren't recyclable, don't believe their corporate lies.
Got a source for that as they havr collection bins at all tips and clearly put a lot of effort into this. I'd be saddened to find out it's a PR exercise.
It's thin layer of cardboard, plastic and metal glued together. Burn and reclaim the metal maybe but as a County Council Recycling Officer in a previous position, I honestly hate how they've avoided the spotlight. Plain plastic bottles are better than them. It's all PR and soon enough the truth will out.
I did some looking around. Apparently the paper is washed out and recycled, the plastic and metal becomes polyaluminium which is downcycled into single use products that then end up in landfill. So not ideal but not incinerated. Tetra Pak's promo video is interesting in that regard as they show the process with the paper being recycled but conveniently forget to mention what happens to the polyaluminium. That video also says the cartons can be shredded and turned into board for construction purposes but doesn't say how much of that ends up bring used in this way.
It definitely feels like someone needs to do more digging into this.
By my own guesstimate 95% of tetra ends up in the bin. There is something funky going in.
Found this (Indonesia)
By my own guesstimate 95% of tetra ends up in the bin.
It's likely 80%+ and will stay that way until councils include it in their curbside recycling collection (some do) because it is either too much hassle.for most people to take to their local tip so they stick it in non-recyclable or they see the recycle sign and lob it into that bin where it gets extracted at the recycling centre and sent to landfill or incineration. It's the same with "recycle in store" plastic.
Found this (Indonesia)
Making the whole carton into panels or pallets definitely seems the best way to go as it is less water and energy intensive and stops the polyaluminium from eventually ending up in landfill. It's unclear how much of it ends up on that path.
I noticed that they are trialing replacing the aluminium with a wood chip so they clearly know the writings on the wall.
The deposit scheme in Germany is a huge cash cow as people pay for the deposit but then never return the container or the container gets destroyed, label comes off and gets rejected by the machine, etc.
And as you said, people leave empty bottles around public bins for homeless people to collect. However, this slowly became an accepted method of “income” for them and you see them checking every rubbish bin for empty bottles. (If a bottle isn’t quite empty, they’ll empty it onto the pavement.) And there are even territorial fights.
Also, lots of fraud with fake deposit coupons (you deposit the bottles in a machine, machine prints a coupon and you take that coupon to the till where you get your money - people now find someone with a label printer and print fake coupons to cash in).
And I loathe having to carry an empty plastic bottle around all day when I’m not near any place to return it. You can’t even squish it as then the machine won’t accept it. Which also means you’re taking huge bags of air to the store every few weeks.
I don’t see any issues with empty bottles and cans around London. Definitely not more than in Berlin. So I can only assume this scheme was proposed so that a few people can fill their pockets with the expected money. As always.
And as you said, people leave empty bottles around public bins for homeless people to collect. However, this slowly became an accepted method of “income” for them and you see them checking every rubbish bin for empty bottles. (If a bottle isn’t quite empty, they’ll empty it onto the pavement.) And there are even territorial fights.
The alleged fights aren't great but other than that, what is the problem? People that go around recycling bottles don't seem too bad. It's not like anyone gets hurt by a homeless person that looks down a bin. Does it matter if someone empties a bottle on the pavement? It's a few centilitres at max and it's better than throwing the bottles in the bin.
Also, lots of fraud with fake deposit coupons (you deposit the bottles in a machine, machine prints a coupon and you take that coupon to the till where you get your money - people now find someone with a label printer and print fake coupons to cash in).
Aren't your machines printing out coupons with unique barcodes? If not, that's incredibly stupid.
I don’t see any issues with empty bottles and cans around London. Definitely not more than in Berlin.
The point of the system is primarily to stop people from throwing the bottles and cans in the trash. So that's where all the bottles are in London. The recycling rate for plastics in the UK is around 40% while countries with a deposit for bottles have a recycling rate closer to 80-90% (depending on the country, so some might be even lower but probably still far above 40%)
It's not like anyone gets hurt by a homeless person that looks down a bin. Does it matter if someone empties a bottle on the pavement? It's a few centilitres at max and it's better than throwing the bottles in the bin.
It’s sad that this is necessary and assumed “normal”. And I don't know about you, but I don’t like to step into some sticky puddle of something the second I take my eyes off the pavement.
Aren't your machines printing out coupons with unique barcodes? If not, that's incredibly stupid.
They do! But in several shops the return machines were added without being connected to their payment system. Probably because of incompatibility. And people figured out how the barcodes are encoded.
The point of the system is primarily to stop people from throwing the bottles and cans in the trash. So that's where all the bottles are in London.
The trash can be sorted. So why not make it a problem of the rubbish companies to properly sort the plastics and getting them recycled?
I’m living in the UK for a year now and I totally love the fact that I can just buy a bottle to drink somewhere and once finished get rid of it without wasting 25p or carrying that empty bottle around all day. Or that I can squish bottles at home before they go into the recycling bin outside.
As somebody that only shops for groceries every few weeks, I absolutely hated the several bags of empty plastic bottles we had to find room for, drive to the supermarket and then spend 20 minutes queuing for and feeding them one by one into the machine.
I have never encountered the problem of sticky puddles.
Is your entire argument about homeless people only about sticky puddles?
The trash can be sorted. So why not make it a problem of the rubbish companies to properly sort the plastics and getting them recycled?
Because sorting like that is very inefficient, expensive, imperfect.
The attitude of wanting to just throw everything in one pile and want someone else to deal with it, is so early 20th century.
It's your trash. If you don't want to bring a ton of bottles every few weeks, either go more often or drink less soda.
I’m living in the UK for a year now and I totally love the fact that I can just buy a bottle to drink somewhere and once finished get rid of it without wasting 25p or carrying that empty bottle around all day
People like you are the reason deposits exist at all. If everyone could be trusted to their part there would be no need for a deposit.
Is your entire argument about homeless people only about sticky puddles?
It's about incentivising bad habits, e.g. homeless people sifting through rubbish bins. People leaving empty bottles out in the street where they get blown around from the wind. Or arguments like "pensioners can just go and collect empty bottles if they want more money".
Because sorting like that is very inefficient, expensive, imperfect.
The attitude of wanting to just throw everything in one pile and want someone else to deal with it, is so early 20th century.
It's 2024. Automatic trash sorting machines are a thing - and they have a very high efficiency of up to 99.99%. Making people pay an extra deposit for plastic bottles (even just simple water) and forcing them to keep the empty bottle full of air until it is returned to a machine where it is then shredded to pieces is so late 20th century. (On a sidenote: In Germany alone, the companies producing these bottles "earn" 180M Euros every year just from bottles that got lost/weren't brought back to a machine - or not accepted (unreadable/missing label, deformed bottle, etc.).)
I mean, nobody is stopping you from e.g. separating used teabags into organic materials, metal staple and paper label, if you are into these kind of things. But please don't force other people to do the same.
People like you are the reason deposits exist at all. If everyone could be trusted to their part there would be no need for a deposit.
In the same way I could say that people like me are the reason rubbish sorting facilities exist and people there have jobs? If everyone could be trusted to their part, there would be no need for these jobs. ¯\(ツ)/¯
I'm surprised it works so poorly for you.
It works extremely well in Sweden. The machines occasionally break down but it's no big deal and probably every single grocery store accepts bottles. I have never seen a homeless person tear open a garbage bag or anything similar. They just look down the bin and take out like max 3 bottles.
88,5 % of bottles and cans sold are returned and recycled.
The problem in the Netherlands sounds more like a skill issue than anything else.
Oh absolutely! Dutch politicians tend to suck at actually implementing new rules that work.
I've heard about excellent results in some of the nordic countries like Sweden. From what I understand, you/they have machines where you can easily deposit a large amount of cans/bottles. We don't have those here.
Our Dutch machines are basically retrofitted ones that used to just take in large 1-2 liter bottles. You have to put in one bottle at a time. That wasn't a problem when they only handled big bottles, but now with cans and small bottles, there's issues. For one, it takes ages to deposit cans. Because you have to put one at a time in. This means that if you're stuck behind someone who's depositing two large garbage bags, it's going to take a while. Also, because the cans are rarely really empty, the machines also get very sticky and break down a lot. In some supermarkets, they basically stop fixing the machines on busy days because... it's just too annoying. So this means that it's always a hassle to get your deposit back.
There's also other issues like: cans can't be dented in any way, or it won't read them. And not every machine takes every deposit item. I.e. if you bought it at supermarket A and supermarket B doesn't sell it... they won't take back the item and give back the deposit. (To be clear, they SHOULD, but due to different barcodes, SKU's, old software, that sort of thing... in practice it doesn't really work. It's a YMMV situation). The machines also only really give you a 'deposit ticket', which you can either use to fund your groceries, or (theoretically) return to get cash. So there's a lot of friction in the system between depositing a bottle and getting an actual deposit back.
As for why Swedish homeless don't tear open bags.... maybe you just have nicer homeless people than we do.
Right now in the Netherlands, around 95 percent of large (1-2 liter bottles) are returned, but only around 65 percent of the cans.
We do have some machines that you can just dump a whole bag of cans and bottles into and it will scan each bottle automatically. Those machines are comparably rare though, I think they mostly exist at larger recycling stations.
The most common machines by far is the ones that you have. It's possible that ours are better. They certainly feel better (faster, more reliable, etc) now than a few years ago. For me returning cans feels often faster because they are shorter so you can put in another can more often. I hate how sticky they get though. Luckily most return stations have a sink nearby where you can wash your hands.
Our deposit system is operated by the same organisation and is the only one allowed to do so by the government. So you can buy and return your bottles wherever you want. And the stores gets paid some amount for providing the service for the organisation which then collects all the bottles.
We also do the exact same thing with deposit ticket. Works pretty well. Usually you can get cash but a few smaller stores in Stockholm refuse to hand out cash because they get a disproportionate amount of bottle returns, so it's a hassle for them. The larger machines support Swish so you will get your deposit in your bank account within seconds.
One reason why I have never seen anyone tear open bags or pull out non bottle trash out of the bins, might be that many (like me) refuse to throw away bottles and cans. So there won't be that many bottles in the trash, maybe one or two.
It's interesting that your return rate for cans is worse than for bottles. Here, the return rate for cans is around 90% which is (slightly) above the return rate for bottles. Cans are also pretty important to recycled because aluminium is very recyclable and pretty bad for the environment to make new material.
It’s interesting that your return rate for cans is worse than for bottles.
There's actually an interesting historical reason for that. We've had bottle deposit here since the days of glass bottles. The bottles would be sold, consumed, brought back, cleaned and refilled. Glass is great for that. The bottle deposit was generally set at 1 guilder. This was the currency we used before the Euro.
If you did your weekly shopping in say, 1995, you'd return your bottles and get a ticket. If you returned 10 bottles, that would be 10 guilders. Now, a FULL cart of groceries for a decent sized family would cost you a 100 guilders max in those days. So that bottle deposit took a nice chunk off that grocery bill. As a result, we had and still have a large percentage of bottle returns. It's ingrained in people to bring back those large bottles since they've always done it.
Now, with cans... there's a bit of a problem. The deposit for large bottles is 25 cents, but the deposit for cans and small bottles is 15 cents. That's not a whole lot, especially considering how much the price of groceries has skyrocketed. Basically, the bottle deposit isn't really a good incentive in terms of monetary value. It only really makes sense if you collect larger amounts of them, like the homeless.
They ARE planning to increase the bottle deposit - make it 50 cents in fact - as a way to incentivize people to bring them back. That will 'probably' work to an extent, but most people dislike the system for other reasons than the monetary value. And if those other issues aren't fixed, raising the bottle deposit only annoys them further.
Here, the deposit is either 1 SEK (0,09€) or 2 SEK (0,17€).
Cans and small PET bottles are 1 SEK and large PET bottles are 2 SEK.
I'm personally of the opinion that we should make the deposit bigger because we might as well. We have had the current system for some years now and inflation obviously makes the deposit less each year.
And since the majority of people already deposit their bottles it wouldn't affect them much at all and fuck the people that still refuse to deposit their bottles. Win win.