GREEN campaigners in Saddleworth have written to Tesco and other leading supermarkets urging them to bring forward plans to install reverse vending machines in all their stores.
These machines repay customers a small deposit paid on plastic bottles and are scheduled to be introduced in 2024 as part of government legislation.
Saddleworth Green Party campaigner Brian Banawich said “Many people will remember taking empty glass bottles back to the shop in exchange for money in the not too distant past.
“It was a fantastic system and it benefitted everyone. These machines work in a similar way and will have a major role to play in reducing the amount of plastic bottles littering our streets, parks and waterways.”
Across the UK, consumers go through an estimated 14 billion plastic drinks bottles, nine billion drinks cans and five billion glass bottles a year
Brian added “If supermarkets took the initiative and installed reverse vending machines three years ahead of schedule that would be a vast amount of plastic removed from the local environment in Saddleworth.
“Retailers need to shoulder much more responsibility in reducing the amount of waste they produce and they also have a huge responsibility in facilitating recycling at a local level.”
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs launched an open consultation back in March which ran until June .
Tesco PLC declined to provide a direct quote. However, they said reverse vending machines were trialled in several stores in 2018, collecting more than one million bottles.
The company currently tackles the impact of plastics on the environment with a four Rs strategy: ‘to remove it where we can, reduce it where we can’t, reuse more and recycle what’s left’.
Sainsbury’s launched a reverse vending machine trial in 2019. This allowed customers to return plastic bottles of any size up to three litres and drinks cans bought from Sainsbury’s in exchange for 5p coupons towards their shop.
The Co-op and Morrisons trialled machines in 2018 with the Co-op introducing them at a variety of music festivals including Leeds, Reading and Latitude.
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