Two weeks ago, one Irish Times reader spent more than 90 minutes trying to return a bag of containers at deposit return machines in Dublin city centre. After trying five different locations where all machines were broken, he admitted defeat and headed home.
The Irish Times received more than 150 responses to a callout asking people about their experiences with the deposit return scheme (DRS).
Alex Kennedy from Dublin 8 said he returned to the same locations the following day where three machines were working again. However, they were full, and he couldn’t return his bottles and cans.
He said he tries to return his containers once a week as his home has “very limited storage”, but he can usually only return them once every six weeks due to the machines being “unreliable”.
RM Block
He said he supports the principle of the scheme. “A financial incentive to return plastic bottles and cans is necessary, and the results show that people will respond to it.”
Having spent time in Indonesia and the Philippines, he saw how unchecked plastic waste can damage communities, waterways and the environment.
“Against the imperfect reality of mixed recycling, including contamination, export, incineration and landfill, collecting these materials separately is a worthwhile initiative.”
However, he said “supporting the scheme does not mean accepting its failures”.
Kennedy said his experience makes “reports of substantial executive and board compensation, administrative costs and large sums from unredeemed deposits difficult to celebrate”, saying that the unredeemed deposit represented “inconvenience, lack of access or a system that has failed to return someone’s money for profit”.
He also said there are “very visible social consequences”, such as city bins being searched for containers and recycling bags “torn open”.
Feidhlim O’Hanlon, from Co Wicklow, described the DRS as an “excellent service”.
He said it was “well designed” and “easy to use from the consumer perspective”.
“Just like plastic bags levy and the smoking ban and the conversion to metric distances, the country does this stuff well.”
However, he said: “It’s just a pity that we need it in the first place and it probably only touches at the edges of what the country needs to do to meet carbon targets.”
He said he visits the machines a couple of times a week, taking whatever is in his home.
He often donates the bottles to the chosen charity at his local store – the Irish Cancer Society.
Kate Irvine, who lives in Dublin, said she “truly hates the scheme”. She said she is an “active environmentalist and Green Party supporter”.
“It has turned my kitchen and car boot into daily garbage units and, as a taxpayer and a recycler, it has turned me into a waste disposal unpaid employee.
“I watch every citizen having to inefficiently bring every individual can and bottle to a recycle point and one by one feed them into the machine.”
She has considered moving country over how “annoying and upsetting” she finds the scheme
She said the only “salvage point is maybe more plastic is being collected, whether it’s really recyclable is debatable, but hopefully it is being contained rather than going into the ocean”.
Irvine said she would be “over the moon if the Government disbanded this scheme”.
In Co Kerry, Jane Murphy of Woodlands Park, a caravan and camping park in Tralee, said for the past two summers she has set up dedicated bins for guests to donate their cans and bottles.
Tralee Meals on Wheels collects the containers. Last year, more than €1,400 was raised.
She said the guests have “really embraced the initiative”. “They’re delighted,” she said, as they don’t have to return their containers and are “doing their bit for charity”.
“While it means a little extra work for our team to empty the bins and prepare them for collection, it’s something we’re proud to do. Not only does it support a local charity, but it also reduces the amount of recyclable material going into our own recycling bins, helping to lower our waste costs slightly.
“Most importantly, however, it ensures that the cans and bottles are returned through the DRS and recycled correctly.”
Eoin Kelly, who lives in Dublin, described the DRS as a “complete failure”.
He recently attended All Together Now festival in Co Waterford and said there was “no way” to return containers.
“The best available [way] was to donate cans and bottles in specific bins which were not available in the campsite.
“The whole scheme does nothing to address the amount of single-use plastic produced. It’s just another pointless waste of time and money on already hard-pressed consumers.”
He said it is “not having the desired effect”.
“The volume of waste has to be reduced. This scheme does nothing to achieve that.”
Marianne Heemskerk, who is from the Netherlands but who lives in Co Mayo, said she thinks the DRS is “a great thing”, saying it “stops people littering the roadside or countryside with empty plastic bottles, often thrown out of car windows”.
“When there is money involved, people are a bit more careful, even 15 or 25 cents.”
She said she generally avoids buying plastic and called herself “anti-plastic”, saying that she has her own reusable bottle instead.
“Holland has it (the DRS), and it works there,” she said.
Paul Quinn from Dublin said the DRS is “the most shameless and opportunistic money grab by an Irish government in recent years, with quite obvious negative and detrimental societal side effects”.
He returns his containers every couple of weeks, saying he is motivated to do so “by way of a small individualistic protest”.
He said the Government “should readjust their immoral compass, admit they made a mistake, have created more problems than they claim to have fixed and return to a perfectly working old mechanism of recycling”.
“I wish they’d have stuck to the old adage, if it’s not broke don’t fix it.”
