PLASTIC muncher that takes a bite out of your grocery bills too
You can recycle your plastic bottles in shops across Europe and you get money for each and every one
YOU can spot them as they come through the shop door. They are the ones with the bags full already. And they all know the score.
You just stick your bottle in the hole, wait for the whirring and the sudden, reassuring ‘squelch-thunk’ as it’s flattened, and then see your refund come up on the screen.
At the end, a receipt pops out which you redeem against your shopping bill or donate to charity.
It is easy, painless and common sense – given the return on every bottle. It is considerably more lucrative than the reward schemes offered by certain retail chains.
Spend €100 at some stores and you might get a few cents back on a loyalty card. But at supermarket giant Iceland in the UK you get 10p per plastic bottle you recycle. And it soon adds up. A 24-pack of 500ml bottles of mineral water, for example, costs £3 but it is actually just 60p by the time you have taken the bottles back – a significant saving.
Though similar schemes have operated on a major scale in certain European countries for years, none of the Iceland stores in the Republic of Ireland are operating the scheme, which is a pity as we generate 61 kilogrammes of plastic waste per person.
In the UK, where the food giant is running a pilot scheme, the company’s experience offers a glimpse at what is possible.
The company has now announced that in a matter of months, it has recycled more than 300,000 bottles, averaging more than 2,500 a day. That is with just five machines. It is, of course, a tiny fraction of the estimated 14billion plastic bottles the British public get through each year. Or the equivalent of nearly 2,000 water bottles, or 5,550 disposal coffee cups per person. But it shows the astonishing potential for a proper widespread deposit scheme. It also raises a very simple question: what the hell are we all waiting for?
Today, I’ve come to see for myself how it works. I am at the Iceland branch on London’s North End Road standing next to the very first of these machines to be installed in Britain. It has been doing a steady trade ever since it was plugged in last May.
‘I love it and I can’t work out why they don’t have these in every supermarket across the country,’ says Joanna Ioannou, a photographer, as she tips the contents of four carrier bags into the bright red machine, just as she does every few weeks. ‘It certainly makes me keep on coming back here.’
So-called return vending machines have been around for more than two decades in parts of Scandinavia, where taking back your empties is now as much a part of everyday life as meatballs and a bleak cop drama on a long, cold evening. The percentage of plastic bottles that go to landfill sites there has now fallen to zero.
IN Ireland and Britain, we might chuck our plastic bottles in with the rest of the recycling, but it is a pretty hit-andmiss business. It only needs an old nappy or a dash of tomato sauce in the mix to make the whole exercise pointless. And it transpires that, rather than recycle it, we have just been shipping a lot of it to China or anywhere else that will accommodate tons of non-degradable rubbish. But now, thanks to the impact of programmes like David Attenborough’s Blue Planet and newspaper campaigns like the Mail’s long-running war on plastic waste, people have finally acknowledged the threat to the Earth and its oceans from our throwaway culture.
It is beyond doubt that people would soon get into the habit of putting their bottles in a machine that paid them for their trouble.
There is more than enough research across Europe to show that it works. In Germany, for example, they pay a deposit of around 20c on every plastic drink container, and get it back when they stick it in a machine.
By 2011, a whopping 98.5% of plastic bottles were being recycled each year. Compare that to Ireland, where the plastic recycling rate is just 36%. In Britain, it is around two-thirds. That is an awful lot of flotsam and filth left to choke Mother Nature.
What is stopping us introducing a national scheme here? Iceland has reported no problems whatsoever with its machines. Ireland became the first country to impose a plastic bag levy in 2002 leading to a 90% drop in the use of plastic bags, so what is stopping us showing the same courage again?
Among the reasons cited by then environment minister Denis Naughten is that charges for households would rise by up to €1 per lift for the green bin collection if the plastic bottle deposit scheme was introduced. He was speaking in response to the tabling of the Waste Reduction Bill by the Green Party in 2017. The party argued that the new set of measures could significantly improve how Ireland recycles its waste.
In the UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove has promised a deposit return scheme at some point, pending consultation. Yet his department is hardly bursting with enthusiasm.
Here at the Fulham, London, branch of Iceland, it is all bewilderingly simple. Store manager Simon Felstead says that his Swedish-designed machine is virtually maintenance-free.
The only thing it doesn’t like are bottles which have been squashed already, and those which are not plastic. It has barcode sensors which will spit out anything inappropriate and can detect anything not sold at Iceland. Each batch of squashed plastic is collected by the next delivery lorry that turns up and taken to the nearest depot, from where it is sent off for recycling.
‘It ensures a totally clean recycling stream,’ explains Niklas Engstrom, sales director of RVM Systems, the Scandinavian firm that makes the machines.
The company now has thousands of them operating in 15 countries.
It was Iceland that led the way last summer, just as it has been the first chain to remove eco-unfriendly palm oil from its product lines, and the first to pledge an end to plastic food packing.
Since then, Tesco has also introduced experimental machines at a handful of branches on a trial basis. The results have already impressed the Scottish government to the point that a deposit return scheme is expected to start at some point next year.
At present, the retailers are bearing the cost of these trial return schemes themselves. Once a proper deposit system is up and running, however, the system is designed to run itself. The retailer would even receive a modest amount for processing each bottle. The only losers are those who chuck away their empties. So why the inertia? Some accuse the waste management industry of lobbying governments against a scheme which would hit refuse revenues.
Back at Iceland, the one thing which perplexes shoppers is why it is taking so long. ‘It’s a lot more convenient for me to buy water and drinks elsewhere, but I come here because of this machine,’ says Sima Moslehi, a student. ‘It’s now part of my routine.’
It should soon be part of everyone’s routine. And even if it isn’t, what enterprising child would leave empty bottles on a beach when they really are worth something?
Meanwhile, our Waste Reduction Bill, which has broad cross-party support, still languishes...