Retailers should face severe fines for failure to properly maintain DRS machines. This is a Tesco in Dublin 8 that never, ever seems to have its only machine working. Staff don't care.

by RomfordWellington

46 comments

  2. Main problem seems to be storage of the empties till they are collected.

  4. The whole scheme is inconvenient. One at a time feed drives me nuts. 

  5. Why should the staff care? 😂 Minimum wage doesn’t include giving a fuck

  8. I was really excited for this scheme however the reality is not as good as I thought . It’s so horrible showing up with your bag and there are 2 people in front of you with a bag the size of an aircraft hanger. And the 1 at a time is painful .

    I heard in Germany you can just dump your bag in , we NEED that here .

    Also I walk to the shop so if I want to do shopping and the machine is broke I’m caring a bag of cans around the shop

  10. I will forever resent the state for making stand in those lines.

  11. Are the ones in Cork just better maintained? I’ve seen two out of order machines and both of those were at an Aldi big enough to have two machines so one was always available.

    On a related note, I’ve a house with a hedge on the main street of a small rural town. Before the deposit return I’d be fishing cans and bottles out of the hedge nearly every school day, so I had dollar signs in me eyes when the scheme was coming in. Unfortunately, that money completely failed to materialise since the little shits are now recycling and I’ve found one lonely can since the start of the scheme.

  12. I did a bucket collection beside a couple of these machines during the year and they “broke down” 5 times in two hours. I’d love to blame the equipment but the majority of the issues were folks not using them correctly. One elderly woman had her whole arm in the slot at one stage causing it to go down. Another was just launching the cans and bottles into it like they were granades.

  13. Why would the staff care? Why should they? Do you think it affects their day in any way that you can’t put your 2 euros worth of smelly cans and bottles into the machine. I work in a shop and I have to change these fucking yokes every day and the bag stinks of piss and shit. I’d be happy if the machine stopped working forever

  14. If we didn’t know that this was in Ireland, we would definitely guess that it was Ireland.

  15. Haven’t happened to me a single time so far. Yes, I do think that it’s the retailers responsibility to keep the machines up and running but at the same time, this is a fairly new thing in Ireland so that’ll take time to get right.

    I’m from Sweden and we’ve had this kind of system for decades and it works just fine.

  16. Staff hate those machines with a vengeance.
    They absolutely stink of stale beer etc
    I’d say those lads in Tesco are bloody dancing in the isles it’s out of order

  17. The machine suppliers face fines for this.

    The bigger problem is there are no fines for people who mistreat the machines

  18. I’ve never used one. I just take the hit and put them in the recycling.

  19. Honestly they’re a massive pain in the ass i work in lidl and they stop every 10 mins we do the best we can however just the way that lidl is we usually are understaffed however we try to resolve the problem as soon as possible regardless. But sometimes its just user error like how hard is it to not stick your fucking hand balls deep into the machine so that it has to be unlocked manually and will you please put the bottle in the right way up so it doesn’t stick in the machine

  20. What gets to me is seeing people who are counting on the refund to pay for their food, and the machine saying “out of service”, meaning it just needs to be emptied. But there’s no pressure on the staff to do it, because there are no repercussions for the shop.

    There needs to be fines to encourage shops to maintain the service so people can get THEIR money back.

  21. Sunday is always the biggest day for people bringing cans and bottles to recycle and it is also always the day that no one seems to be around to empty or fix the machines.

    An absolute joke honestly.

  22. Its so frustrating especially for people who dont drive and have to walk any kind of distance with big bulging bags.

  24. Where are everyone finding all these broken machines? I bring mine back weekly and have yet to find one that’s broken.

  25. It’s not the retailer it’s the machine itself. The company that own them are no help

  26. I work in a shop and the only people in the whole shop who know how to fix them are the two managers. The rest of us have never been trained to handle one of these machines.

    And I hope we never do as we already have a million tasks dumped on us without worrying about a return machine malfunctioning too.

  27. Ofc the staff don’t care. They cannot fix it. they report it to corporate to fix it then they can’t do anything 

  28. From the start it was a dumb idea. Yes you get some money back but you pay more for that product. Protecting the planet I’m all for it but the thing is we all have recycle bin (use to be where you put those bottles) so now we have more trucks on the road just for collect them. Please explain to me how is it good for the environment

  30. As if 95% of the population weren’t using green bins for this already, what a joke this scheme is, but we’ll put up with it like we roll over a put up with every other robbing trick they come up with.

  31. They need way more of the bulk machines that you can just throw a whole bag of cans and bottles into – there are only a handful of them around.

  32. Every time. There’s a homeless person usually sitting next to the Spar I go to, so instead of dragging the empties back home, I will hand ’em over to them (if they want it, usually they do).

    The machines are just crap.

    They can be so much better (I’m Finnish where this type of a thing has been a thing for decades and machines are almost never out of service.)

  33. “Sorry for any inconvenience” should read Sorry for the inconvenience! We’re all inconvenienced by bringing our rubbish back to the shop, bringing it inside and then back out to the car before we start shopping.

  34. In the dealz in my nearest town there is a bottle machine that has been working for maybe a week since it got installed and since then it’s been “out of order” but if you read the screen it just needs to be emptied, I empathise with the workers not wanting to empty them because they absolutely reek of stale alcohol, in the supervalue in the same town the exit of the store smells unbearable at times with the smell or beer, they need to add like some sort of scent canceller into them or something, cus it’s also not fair for the person paying the extra 15 or so cent to have to go searching in the town for a machine that isnt either full or broke

  35. If I wanted to collect rubbish for money I’d have gotten a different job. I just throw them in the recycling same as I always did. Not worth the hassle.

  36. The machine has a unique identifier and is linked via WiFi.
    Stores receive a grant of approx 2k per year when the machine is operational more than 80% of the time.
    The biggest issue is getting the bins collected so you can have your machine on

  37. Aren’t these usually run by a different company to the premises? That would be why the staff don’t seem to care, they have no authority to care (and probably aren’t paid enough to care in any case)

  38. It always works fine for me. By the way I was over in London recently. I was shocked at the amount of bottles and cans just left on the street or piled up in corners. They could do with adopting it.

  40. They still need to accept the return. Machines are completely optional.

    The only way they do not need to accept returns are if they have an exemption.

    You can remind them of their obligations and then report to the ReTurn enforcement for breaching said obligations.

  41. I work maintaining a notoriously busy one

    We all detest those fucking machines

    The town has decided multiple bin liners are the receptacle of choice, their a wierd design too, full of glitches and cant be cleaned throughout

    The scheme is a tax, the machines are a taxation, and the shady private company will be the next scandal when the see how they swander the money

  43. As someone that has to empty these things regularly, it would be great if Joe public wouldn’t fuck in half full bottles of liquid into a machine, full of electronics, random wires and a tablet screen on the front, that’s kinda temperamental when liquids get involved.

    Empty bottles and cans of liquids, take the cap off the bottles so the air can get out when it’s crushed and not buckle the crusher in the machine and take away your fucking cardboard/bin bags of bin juice when your finished . Fines should go both ways

  45. I just put them in the green bin and get on with my life. Not worth the time or hassle

  46. Here in Germany they have to take the bottles back. The machines are there so the cashier’s don’t have to take them. I think I’ve seen a machine out of order only once…

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