Streets lined with gold
They have brought in a new “initiative” here.
There is an extra charge being placed on plastic bottles and cans [presumably tin cans and not plastic ones?]. They call it a “deposit” and the thinking is that people can bring them to machines which will issue tokens. These tokens can either be used as vouchers in the shop or exchanged for cash. That’s the theory anyway.
As per usual they are drawing some fairly hefty conclusions. They think we all trot off every week to our local, or not so local supermarket to do our shopping and that said supermarket will have a functioning machine there. Maybe in a lot of cases that’s true but in a lot of cases it isn’t.
For example, I get the majority of my groceries delivered. I haven’t been into an actual supermarket for many years. Frankly I am more than happy with that; I hate supermarkets with their endless isles, their tacky musak and their queues for the checkout. For an extra fee [under a tenner] I am more than happy to have my order dumped on the kitchen table so all I have to do is pack the stuff away.
But if I am paying up to 25c extra on some items, how do I get my “deposit” back? Will another van arrive during the week to I can post my stuff into it? Of course not. Maybe they’ll install a machine in the village? That’s possible but very unlikely. Maybe the village grocery will accept my used crap over the counter but that conjures up images of queues forming as I endlessly pull tins and bottles out of plastic sacks while the poor assistant has to keep a tally.
I have more than an inkling that I will continue to dump my stuff in the green bin and just accept the loss of “deposit” for what it is – yet another tax.
I now have visions of gangs of marauding kids going around housing estates emptying green bins onto the street to see if they can find any treasure.
I wonder if they had thought of that?
“I now have visions of gangs of marauding kids going around housing estates emptying green bins onto the street to see if they can find any treasure.
I wonder if they had thought of that?”
You hit the nail quite squarely on the head. Years ago, Oregon came up with the “Bottle Bill”. Five cent deposit on all beverage cans and bottles. Take them back to the store and get the deposit back. This was great unless you were a storekeeper and had to count the bottles, sometimes several trash bags full. The state opened up a bunch or redemption centers and the store folks didn’t have to deal with it anymore.
Fast forward 20-30 odd years and the homeless are now doing just what you described, dump the garbage out, get the goods and leave the garbage lay.
some of the really bold ones are walking out of the stores with a case or two of bottled water, dumping the water out and returning the empties to the redemption center. Pool their money, buy their, drugs, and go to happy land for a while. Apparently, Pentanal is pretty cheap as drugs go.
As young lad me and my mates would go around the village checking all the public waste bins for Corona pop bottles to get the deposit back, we used to do alright, usually had enough for a bottle of pop and some bags of crisps between us.
A glass bottle deposit (2d at the time) was quite common in the UK once.
Almost 60 years ago, as a teenager hitching round Scotland with school-mates, we encountered a remote shop behind which was its open store of empty pop bottles. One pal picked up 3 bottles, went into the shop, claimed the 6d refund and spent it on a chocolate bar. Then the next one of us did the same thing – it was only on the fifth attempt that the unaware shop-keeper finally worked out what was happening. Happy days, but not for the shop-keeper who’d given away four chocolate bars by then.
Goodie. If I make a payment that resolves all moral issues for me. Currently I sort them into a recycling bin. Now I will be able to dump them in the street wherever I finish the bottle and a homeless guy will be able to pick it up and get some dosh for it. Win win. Charity work and bottle credits to relieve my guilt. I’ll be a hypocritical woke yet.
Nice to see the government getting points for something when it is the shopkeeper that has to do the work for no benefit to him whatsoever. Again.
That’s a great idea! Just scatter your crap wherever there are homeless. God knows here’s enough of them in Dublin.
As for getting the shopkeeper to do the work, they learned that one from the smoking ban.
I actually didn’t think too long when scribbling this. I had forgotten about the good old days of scouring the place for bottles. It must have been a distant memory in my subconscious…
In the days of Noah, I had a great aunt who lived in a house close to the Thames in London.
One day, the river rose and the house flooded and she claimed that her father’s chief concern was to save his empty beer bottles as if the labels were washed off, he couldn’t recover the deposits!
Priorities are important?