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‘Huge disappointment’ as UK delays bottle deposit plan and excludes glass
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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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.
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.
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)
https://re-pal.com/recycle-over-4250-tons-of-used-beverage-cartons-and-multi-layered-plastics-to-make-50000-new-pallets/
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.
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.