So let me get this straight… if I do the right thing and recycle at home like I currently do, I’ll lose money? And to not lose money I have to lose time by carting plastic bottles to a supermarket?
And this makes it easier for people out and about? How? I don’t know what it’s like everywhere, but here every street bin is split in to two. One half for general waste, and one for recyclables like plastic bottles.
It should be easy enough to have half a dozen standard bottles and jars etc for everyday things that can be returned, washed and reused, we used to do it.
Then if posh wine or marmite etc. wanted to continue using special containers they could pay a surcharge for theirs to be recycled and returned to them.
Returning glass bottles when I was a kid back in the 1970s and 1980s was so easy to do and we got money back for doing it. We should definitely go back to doing that again immediately.
This is because glass weighs a lot more and takes more volume than compressed plastic. Anyone setting up a collection network needs to be paid to do it and there just isn’t any money in it.
There is a solution which is making all manufacturers in all industries responsible for handling the disposal of their products and building that into the cost of it rather than shirking it down the line. That includes everything from jam to kids toys to consumer electronics.
But that’s unpopular with the people producing disposable products because it affects the bottom line.
Why though? Germany does it, seems simple enough.
You’re incentivising good behaviour, potentially reducing broken bottles on the streets and reducing cost/workload for councils to deal with general littering of bottles.
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So let me get this straight… if I do the right thing and recycle at home like I currently do, I’ll lose money? And to not lose money I have to lose time by carting plastic bottles to a supermarket?
And this makes it easier for people out and about? How? I don’t know what it’s like everywhere, but here every street bin is split in to two. One half for general waste, and one for recyclables like plastic bottles.
It should be easy enough to have half a dozen standard bottles and jars etc for everyday things that can be returned, washed and reused, we used to do it.
Then if posh wine or marmite etc. wanted to continue using special containers they could pay a surcharge for theirs to be recycled and returned to them.
Returning glass bottles when I was a kid back in the 1970s and 1980s was so easy to do and we got money back for doing it. We should definitely go back to doing that again immediately.
This is because glass weighs a lot more and takes more volume than compressed plastic. Anyone setting up a collection network needs to be paid to do it and there just isn’t any money in it.
There is a solution which is making all manufacturers in all industries responsible for handling the disposal of their products and building that into the cost of it rather than shirking it down the line. That includes everything from jam to kids toys to consumer electronics.
But that’s unpopular with the people producing disposable products because it affects the bottom line.
Why though? Germany does it, seems simple enough.
You’re incentivising good behaviour, potentially reducing broken bottles on the streets and reducing cost/workload for councils to deal with general littering of bottles.