Spending machine
SCOTLAND’S first ever supermarket vending machine that refunds returned plastic bottles has been installed.
Shoppers at the Iceland store in Musselburgh, East Lothian, can return bottles of all sizes and brands sold by Iceland and Food Warehouse in return for a 10p voucher per bottle.
A similar machine was placed in one of Iceland’s London branches last month.
Iceland Foods’ managing director Richard Walker said: “At least one third of plastics, much of this relating to packaging, is single-use and then discarded – plastic bottles are a prime example.
“In the UK, consumers go through an estimated 13billion plastic drinks bottles a year but more than five billion are incinerated, sent to landfill or left to pollute streets, countryside or our marine environment.
“This must change and we want to be part of that change.”
It is estimated 12million tons of plastic enters the world’s oceans every year, posing a BY JOHN DINGWALL serious threat to marine life. Plastic can harm or kill sea creatures through entanglement in debris such as abandoned fishing gear or as a result of eating plastic mistaken for food. Annual consumption of plastic bottles is set to top half a trillion by 2021, far outstripping recycling efforts and jeopardising oceans, coastlines and other environments.
A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute, equivalent to about 20,000 a second.
By 2050, experts say the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish.
The vending machine has been put in as part of a six-month trial ahead of Scottish Government plans to roll out deposit return facilities across Scotland.
The move is also part of a plan to tackle Scotland’s “throwaway culture” with a ban announced on the sale and manufacture of plasticstemmed cotton buds and microbeads in cosmetics.