As we approach the one year anniversary of the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme – has it been a success or a bit of a nuisance?

900 million plastic bottles and cans have been returned in less than a year through the scheme.

The Deposit Return Scheme, which was introduced in February 2024, adds the cost of a deposit (15-25c) to drink bottles and cans, depending on the size of the can or bottle.

Consumers can then bring the empty containers back to designated machines where they receive the deposit back in the form of a voucher.

Re-Turn said on some dates in December the number of bottles and cans received was over five million.

Bottles On The Shelves. 28/11/2022 Photo Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie

On Newstalk Breakfast, Irish Mirror features editor and columnist Larissa Nolan said it is impossible to measure the scheme’s success as we don’t know how many bottles and cans aren’t being returned

“One of the many problems with this scheme is the unanswered questions behind [it],” she said.

“We are told continuously how many [bottles and cans] are returned but we don't know how many are not returned and we don't know what the finances of that are.

“We don't know how much they are worth and unless we do know that, we cannot possibly gauge the success of the scheme.

“I don't know why but I think if the scheme was so successful, we should have been knowing both figures all along.”

Ms Nolan said that most people were recycling their bottles and cans already and bringing them to the supermarket is an added nuisance.

“In fact, the Minister behind this told me himself that this idea that a lot of the green bin is going to incineration is actually incorrect - that isn't the situation at all,” she said.

“Those of us who were putting our returnables, as I think they are called now, our bottles and cans, into the green bins, we are the ones who were doing it all along.

“Now we're expected to have yet another recycling bin in our kitchens and then every week or so, put all these bottles and cans into our cars and bring them for a drive.

“When you do bring them often the machines are broken or they aren't working and you have to bring them all back again.”

A worker demonstrates a Deposit Return Scheme Reverse Vending Machine in a Marks & Spencer supermarket in Dublin, 1-2-34. Image: Stephanie Rohan/Newstalk

Environmental journalist John Gibbons, who also joined the show, said that prior to the scheme, there was a 60% recycling rate – with one-in-four bottles and cans not being recycled.

“Contrary to what that Minister might have might have suggested [to Ms Nolan]… a huge amount [was] not making its way back into the recycling chain,” he said.

Mr Gibbons said instead of this waste being incinerated, it is now being diverted “towards what's called closed loop recycling”.

“That means in the case of aluminium cans, they get reused indefinitely and infinitely and in the case of PET plastics, they can be reused up to about seven times,” he said,

“So this is the direction chain that we have to be moving in, we've got to get away from the culture of just throwing stuff away and that's really the critical differences we made here.”

Mr Gibbons said “the proof is in the pudding”, with the return rates suggesting a “massive public buy in”.

A Re-turn Deposit Return Scheme machine is seen at a Tesco supermarket, 27-4-24. Image: Leah Farrell/© RollingNews.ie