England should have deposits on bottles

[hejhej]

Can't believe they don't have this yet.

It helps keep spaces cleaner and homeless people just have to find one or two bottles and they can afford a bread product to fill them for hours. Its win win really.

Denmark do it - it's great.

I can't find a reference for this, so I maybe typing complete bollocks.

But I did hear some years ago that the fossil fuel cost of retrieving bottles, washing them, and then redistributing pretty much negated any savings made as far as eco-friendliness went.

I used to love being allowed to take the bottles back as I would usually be told that I could spend the 10p on sweets. Fond memories.

When I started working in pubs, most of the bottles got returned too, but that's also gone by the wayside.

There must be some way of making it cost effective? Why did it stop being so?

Check out Barr drinks. I have two bottles waiting to be returned and then I will get some money back.

When did bottle deposits disappear in the UK? My last memory is 1987 where an offy gave me money back on beer bottles. I'd save 'em up til enough for beer and fags when skint. The shop wasn't happy about the numerous bags of bottles but always came good.

They haven't disappeared in the UK. As has already been mentioned, Barrs still has returnable bottles, at least in Scotland.

'pop' trivia: Scotland is the only country with a coca cola factory where coca cola is not the top selling pop. It is pipped to the post by Irn Bru.

Amazing how everything eventually turns full circle. I think this was stopped here in the seventies when they started using plastic instead of glass.

Also plastic bags were always charged for and were proper strong large bags. Then they became free and gradually morphed into the tiny flimsy offerings we have now...now we are to buy our bags again.

It'll be green shield stamps next!

We have it in California as well, also in several other states.

Canada has it. It's a bloody nightmarish system, no need to do it our way. Imports and domestic are charged differently so every can has to be intact at the recycling depot. If they were all the same, they could be crushed. Lots of homeless people (and others, loads of youth and newcomers do it) recycle for cash.

Cons; smelly, dirty, problematic wasps, aaaarrrggghhh bottle depots that NIMBYs hate, homeless people want to take massive bags of crap into shelters at night causing issues with staff (because you are asking them to throw money away), people on bikes wobbling all over the road with enormous bags, weird territorial issues with street recycling.

Denmark do it - it's great.

Except on a load of Cocio bottles. Makes me feel guilty every time I drink Cocio. Which admittedly isn't that often anymore, I'm trying to lose weight...

Quite disappointing to see that it would not be economically viable.
How do the Germans finance it?
We have just come back from Berlin and saw various people walking round with bags of empty bottles and an elderly couple looking through bins for plastic bottles. Presumably they use it as a source of income. You don't see plastic bottles on the streets, but we did see glass beer bottles left on the U Bahn.
I am not sure how it works. We were charged 25 cents in Pfand but when we took the bottle back got varying amounts back from 8 cents to 15 cents, so maybe the seller keeps the difference.

I remember when there were deposits on glass bottles. When I was about 7 I think it was 10p a bottle. We used to go round the park picking up as many as we could find (yup went in the bin a few times!!)) then took them back and spent the money on sweets. Those were the days when children liked picking up rubbish.

In Italy (and probably other countries) you can go to the wine shop and get bottles refilled strit from the cask. Any bottle would do they charged by the litre

I quite like the German system. My young nephew and his friends (he lives in Germany) like to collect any stray/spare bottles so they can collect the pfand. I liked it when I was last over there, in the local Lidl we got a money off voucher for returning bottles.

To my mind, this subject is one which blows a hole in the whole ecobollocks thing.

If the planet is as close to a disaster as some people who seem to want to pick our pockets over it claim, how come all the things we need to do cost money, and are incredibly complex ? It would be far easier (for example) to implement bottle recycling/reuse, than (say) provide a network of electric car charging points. (It would also save a lot more carbon emissions, by the way).

Apparently, government has no idea what the carbon footprint of a single HMRC letter is. Nor MP. Hardly the actions of a society on the brink.

One thing about having a parent who dodged the bullet of rampant Catholicism - they kept my cynicism alive. "Don't do as the priest says, but learn from how he acts" would be a rough translation.

All the traffic lights near me have been rephased to deliberately slow car journeys down. A massive increase in carbon emissions from all the idling engines. But a massive win for the (hypocritical) ideology of "public transport uber alles".

One wonders if government sometimes consists of departments who do their best to cancel each other out.

Have any other posters thought of simple ideas they can't believe aren't pursued - not even discussed ?

Germany needs a deposit system due to their massive consumption of mineral water (that said, the tap water in Berlin is pretty yuk, though perfectly safe to drink so I kind of understand it).

You're going to have to transport the bottles whether you recycle them or take them back to a supermarket for recycling, so I don't really see the point. I recycle all my bottles (generally plastic milk bottles and glass wine bottles as I don't buy mineral water or much in the way of soft drinks).

You say England in the title- do Wales, Scotland and NI have a deposit system? I didn't know that. I've not been in Scotland since 2012 but was in Wales last year and didn't know they had a deposit system.

Esther Rantzen ran a huge publicity campaign against Fizzy drinks in glass bottles, and in the process stopped deposits on bottles.
My local council recycles bottles (glass and plastic) among other things from the doorstep.

the tap water in Berlin is pretty yuk, though perfectly safe to drink so I kind of understand it
We've just been to Berlin and some of the mineral water tasted much worse than the tap water tbh.

Berlin tap water is fine. London is horrid.

In Germany beer bottles are reused many many times with just a wash and new label.

Think they have an 8c on them where big water bottles have a 50c.

We definitely should have the equivalent of the German pfand brought back here in the UK. Especially for plastic as well as glass. Can't think it would be THAT much hassle

We have that system here in The Netherlands.Mainly for glass beer bottles,crates of glass beer bottles and large (1 litre of larger) pop and mineral water bottles. They do drink a lot of mineral water here,despite having the best tap water in Europe.

The pro-business party who are the biggest govt. coalition party wanted to scrap the scheme a couple of years ago (due to the cost for businesses) but so many people thought this would be bad for the environment,they backed down.

Subsequently you see virtually no litter consisting of these bottles.

Barrs is stopping deposits on bottles after Christmas . Apparently not enough people are returning the bottles to warrant the cost of collecting and cleaning of them.

(I don't know if this still happens in Australia.) It still happens in South Australia.

You get 10c per can/bottle etc. when you take them in for recycling. Even the schools collect so they can recycle too!

For me a big change would be for councils to actually collect glass bottles. Ours collect everything except glass which you have to recycle yourself. A bit of a PITA if you don't drive....
I remember deposits on pop bottles in the 80's both at the corner shop and the 'pop man' who delivered on a Saturday.