For our ocean’s sake, we can’t keep kicking the can – or bottle – down the road. We call on the UK government to speed up this law and to follow Wales’s ambition to include plastic, metal and glass.”
The “ocean’s sake”?
Glass doesn’t float. If it winds up in the ocean, one just gets beach glass.
In fact, we had a place up in California where a beach was being directly used as a dump once. The only remaining stuff, after the metal had rusted away and such, was glass, and it all got turned into beach glass. The state went from trying to stop people from dumping things on the beach to banning people hauling away the beach glass; it had become a tourist attraction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg%2C_California)
Glass bottle recycling is about reuse. Wash the bottle and use it again.
In the UK off-licenses (liquor stores) used to partake in a scheme where they’d take your empties and give you money off your next purchase. Those bottles were then sent back to the bottling plant to be reused. It went away with the wide spread use of plastic bottles (80s).
Aas far as I’m aware, there’s no reason not to do it again except the distribution network is more centralised now, and sending stuff back is something nobody budgets for. I expect this is the “too complicated aspect”.
there’s no reason not to do it again except the distribution network is more centralised now, and sending stuff back is something nobody budgets for
So I’ve heard that’s the main issue with reusing glass bottles now. Drink bottling is more centralised which means higher transport costs to return them, making it uneconomical. When it used to be done here bottles would return to a more local bottling plant.
Those same lorries that deliver go back to site.
My interpretation is that by excluding glass from the scheme, this may incentivise consumers to buy plastic instead. Some of which will inevitably end up in the ocean.
Why is this needed when there is kurb side recycling in the UK?
Recycling is bullshit, we should be re-using glass with a deposit system. Like much of Europe.
The separate the actually recyclable plastic from the rest of the “recyclable plastic”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A UK deposit return scheme for recycling drinks bottles has been delayed to 2027, meaning it will not be in place until almost a decade after it was proposed.
He said the delay was because additional time was needed to synchronise the policy of the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales with that in England.
The scheme is intended to cut litter on land and sea by paying consumers a small cash sum to return their bottles and cans.
Steve Reed, the shadow environment secretary, said: “We’ve gone through four prime ministers since the Conservative government first promised a deposit return scheme for recycling bottles.
The Conservatives simply don’t care that plastic bottles end up littering our streets, parks, rivers and seas.
Labour will work across Britain and with business to bring in a deposit return scheme that will stop this waste and clean up our environment.”
The original article contains 555 words, the summary contains 149 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
He said the delay was because additional time was needed to synchronise the policy of the devolved administrations in >Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales with that in England.
What a load of old fish parts.
Have Neoliberals done anything that isn’t a huge disappointment?
