Plan for 20p deposit on drinks containers in Scotland

Yes it's great there is the will, but there has to be a bit more fleshing out of the detail to ensure that it doesn't have a detrimental impact on small shops.

Organising the finance and bookkeeping could be complicated for small shops, too. However, at least there is the will to try to do it.

It's a great idea (in theory) and well done to the SG for introducing this. Small shops have expressed concern about storage etc of the returned bottles though and have asked the Scottish Govt for clarification re how the expect them to manage that. In Germany it's only certain supermarkets that take back the bottles and the recycling machines are quite large things - certainly not something that could be easily fitted into a small corner shop with more limited opening hours.

Oor Wullie and Fat Bob will be out there collecting so they can buy sweeties with the pocket money at the weekend.

Reminds me of the good old days when the Corona man used to do his delivery round, taking back the empties.

"Currently, a consultation is taking place in England with a deposit of about 15p being mooted.

Wales has been involved with the research being done for England. However, the Welsh government said it was already the third best place in the world for recycling, so it questioned whether a bottle deposit scheme would improve on that.

In Northern Ireland, a deposit return scheme is also under consideration.

From the BBC article.

This is what the whole of the U.K. should be doing.

This is common practice here in Canada for as long as I can remember.
Makes for much less waste. I am horrified if I go to another country and find bottles in the garbage.

And you have to be careful not to damage the bar code on the bottles, as this is what the machine reads.

When you buy the drinks, the deposit is listed separately on the till slip.

This has been the system for a few years now in Germany. At any time of day you can see people lugging huge bin bags full of plastic bottles to the machines, located in the entrance area of supermarkets.

The machine can differentiate between plastic and glass, so you just "post" the bottles into the machine, crates go in a larger opening at the bottom, and when you've finished, you press a button and a tab is printed, which you then redeem at the till.

All bottles and drinks cans, glas yoghurt jars and glass milk bottles can be returned in this way, regardless of whether you bought them at that supermarket or not.

Same here Bikergran. It was the norm when I was growing up (in South Africa) and it was how my children made extra money all through the 1980s, going up and down our street asking for 'empties'.

We used to do this many many years ago with pop bottles/milk bottles.

Not sure if they put what is now known as a deposit on it first.

As children we used to hunt round about for discarded bottles to take back...I seem to remember some shops would only take the brands that they sold in the shop back.