[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC: Reverse Vending Machine

[makko]

On 12.01.2015 05:45, Paul Johnson wrote:
>
> How is this not a recycling center?  I agree, perhaps the refund 
> namespace should be a thing, but I don't think anybody, in practice, 
> gives two shakes whether some teenager in the back of Fred Meyer is 
> counting cans out of a cart or if they're dumping them into a CanStar 
> bin, unless they buy a lot of off-brand products that are 
> chain-specific (in which, you either would rather have someone just 
> count cans instead of checking to actually see if that chain sold 'em 
> or not, otherwise you're having to go find a /different/ chain's 
> CanStar thingie to try again next time you take out a load of 
> recycling, repeat ad nauseum, if your local bottle bill works the same 
> way as Oregon's).  Though that might also need supplemental tagging 
> for "brands accepted"...
>

Well, it is sort of a recycling center, after all those items end up in 
recycling. On the other hand there are recycling centers which do not 
offer refund. I'm not really sure how to solve that particular problem 
with shops that only accept certain brands. If your country does not 
have a legal basis for a refund system, which is at least controlled on 
a state level, this seems a lot of work for little benefit.

However, in several European countries there are country-wide laws in 
place which (in theory) guarantee you that every refund place accepts 
all refundable items. Refundable items are marked with a small icon and 
there are not that many exceptions, so most bottles and cans are 
refundable, and accepted by those machines.  Usually markets are not 
allowed to decline giving you refund for bottles marked with the symbol, 
but I am aware of at least one exception in Germany and Finland, where 
some markets at least try not to accept one particular item from a 
discount market called Lidl (usually you have to ask a person and then 
they will accept it, but they refuse to program the machine to accept 
those bottles).

There is even a certain culture around this whole refund system, where 
some people collect bottles that are lying around and bring them to 
these machines to make some extra money.

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