A rubbish roll-out of Re-turn bottle plan

ON Tuesday, Fine Gael Senator Barry Ward put out a photo on his social media channels. It showed one of the new reverse vending machines that accepts plastic bottles and cans, and returns the deposit paid on them in the form of a receipt that can be used against the cost of shopping, or redeemed for cash.

Beside the vending machine was a pile of discarded bottles, and a comment from the senator that simply said: ‘Ah, lads.’ Well, what did he expect?

Now, there is no excuse for littering, but to find out why the bottles and cans were all over the floor, and not in the machine, we have to go back to the first day of the month, the kick-off day of the deposit return scheme. The logic behind it is that these containers are what are known as high-value recyclables. Aluminium can be used over and over again, while polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, bottles can be spun into fibre and used in clothing, sleeping bags and thermal wear, and many other products.

Logic

Around 60% are recycled in bins we already pay for, but separating them is costly and time consuming. The other 40% often end up either in landfill, or just discarded on the street, and that makes for a compelling argument in favour of a deposit, 15cent for containers of between 150ml and 500ml inclusive, and 25c for those 501ml to three litres (the big five-litre water bottles are exempt).

The qualifying bottles are marked with an R symbol so you know exactly what can go in the machine – or, at least, that is what we were told by the relevant new agency, Re-turn. Within mere hours of the much-trumpeted scheme going live, though, one Twitter user, Seán Daly, was charged the deposit on a bottle of orange juice he bought in SuperValu in Ballymahon, Co. Longford, even though the R logo was not on it.

SuperValu quickly explained that the deposit was built into the barcode, and that any deposit charged, even in the absence of the symbol, would be refunded. Hours later, Mr Daly was on Liveline, quickly followed by Re-turn CEO Ciaran Foley, who clarified that some 800 beverages sold in cans or plastic bottles, a combination of old stock and imported products, would not immediately bear the symbol. The deposit, he explained, might be charged and refunded anyway, based on the barcode. Confused? Well, so you should be because, since February 1, I have bought bottles on which no deposit has been charged, and others on which it has.

Perhaps I should be more diligent about receipts, but I usually turn them down when asked, precisely because they’re a waste of another precious resource, namely paper. The only place I ever check them is in the receipt area on the Lidl Plus app.

What this means is that while I now have eight plastic bottles ready for recycling, only two have the R symbol, and I have no idea if I paid the deposit on the others. The only way to find out is to bring them to the machine to see if it accepts or rejects and, if the latter, I have to bring them back home to the recycle bin. Other people, clearly, have decided to just leave them by the machine, which is why Tesco has rolled out actual bins for the rejects.

This is not the only complaint. As many have pointed out, those who do their grocery shopping online cannot return the containers to the delivery person.

Many with disabilities cannot use the machines at all, because the insertion point is too high to reach from a wheelchair.

Families who get boil water notices and have to buy bottles instead might quickly find their stockpile growing beyond the available space in a small apartment, because the containers must be intact, not crushed.

Then there’s the short-term hit. On a six-pack of two-litre bottled water, it’s an extra €1.50.

On a 24-pack of 33cl canned minerals, you now pay an extra €3.60 at the till.

We have been assured that everything will settle down at the end of May, the last day it will be legal to sell containers without the R symbol, because all remaining stock will have been rinsed through the system. It certainly would be nice to think so.

But isn’t the whole mess just another example of how our leaders rush headlong into a new system without fully explaining in the first place that it’s the barcode that matters, not necessarily the R symbol at all?

Mess

Even as I write this, the Re-turn website home page clearly states: ‘When you buy a drink in a plastic bottle, aluminium or steel can, that features the Re-turn logo, you pay a small deposit in addition to the price of the drink. When you return your empty and undamaged drink container to participating shops and supermarket, you get your deposit back in full.’ Only when you click another menu does it say that if you are charged a deposit on a drink with no R symbol, you will get it back anyway.

So, off you go to the machine and, like waiting for mortgage approval, you can sweat for a minute to see if you’re accepted or rejected. That, of course, is if the machine is actually working at all, because plenty seem to be either full, or out of order.

This, after all, is Ireland, where the new often seems bafflingly ineptly introduced and, as always, there is no accountability by anyone when it goes wrong. Maybe the senator should tweet something about that.