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Optimising For Bankruptcy
A lesson in disingenuous profit making from the recycling industry and unsurprising lack of foresight from the government.
Ireland recently introduced a bottle and can recycling scheme¹ that relies upon charging the consumer what is what I like to refer to as a “deposit tax” on each qualifying bottle or can sold.
This tax can’t be avoided, except in specific circumstances such as airports where, if you leave the country, you obviously can’t return the bottle.
Now, it being a government scheme pushed primarily by the dying Irish Green Party, it naturally has many, many flaws. No surprises there either way, especially with the Green Party involved and you’re familiar with their anti-nuclear, high tax, punish the public approach to furthering their own, unpopular, ruthless climate change agenda.
The scheme involves having to use the machines to get your money back (instead of using your green bin at home that you pay for anyway), having to carry uncrushed bottles and cans around (they take an awful lot of space), relying on the machines being in operation (they’re often out of service), relying on the fact the machines are accessible (sometimes they’re locked inside of supermarkets or indoor shopping centres), hoping there’s not a queue as there are so few machines, and to top all of that off the major problem that if you shop online because you’re unable to shop in person then there’s absolutely no way of getting your money back.
Let’s not even mention the additional costs of the machines themselves, their running costs in terms of staff, servicing, and electricity and the fleet of diesel powered trucks that have to come and regularly empty them.
The machines issue a paper ticket, when you get to use a working machine, which is then redeemable only in the store chain in which the recycling machine is installed as either a voucher off a purchase or for actual cash.
I’ll just say here that retail outlets, without a machine, are supposed to take returns over a counter but I’ve personally never seen this. I’ve asked a few times out of curiosity but every time I’d been told that they just don’t do it — some people haven’t even heard of the ability to return over the counter.²
