The Chief Executive of Re-Turn has said that despite initial “teething issues” during the first month of the Deposit Return Scheme, people are now getting used to it.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne, Ciaran Foley said the scheme has stated well, but that during the first week of the scheme deposits were being charged on products where they should not have been.
“We’ve made a very solid start, I think we acknowledge, and we always knew there’d be some difficulties during the transition period in particular.
Mr Foley said Ireland is benchmarked against the Slovakian scheme which went live in 2022, given similar populations.
Returns, Mr Foley said, are already tracking “well ahead” of the opening weeks of the Slovakian scheme.
“They took back 264,000 in their first month, we actually took back over two million,” he said, adding they took in “353,000 on Saturday alone”.
“People seem to be getting used to it, and feedback from retailers is that’s what they’re seeing,” he said.
Mr Foley said the “vast majority” of bottles that have been rejected are products that were never in the scheme and customers should not have been charged a deposit on them.
“We knew from the beginning there were issues with multi-packs and foreign importers re-registering codes,” he said, so for the first week to ten days there were “definitely products that were charged deposits that shouldn’t have been”.
In those instances where people know they have paid a deposit, Re-Turn are asking customers to work with the retailer, and if this is not successful then they should contact Re-Turn, he said.
Mr Foley acknowledged it was “a big rigmarole” for the sake of 15c, adding that there were “teething issues”.
‘It has been difficult’
Speaking on the same programme, the President of the Convenience Stores & Newsagents Association said it had been an “interesting” four weeks since the scheme was introduced.
“That’s the kindest thing I can say about it,” Gus O’Hara added.
He said the CSNA had to launch a ‘Be Kind’ scheme asking customers to be kind to cashiers who were struggling to cope with issues associated with the new machines.
“I am sure these are bedding-in problems that will resolve,” he said, “but it has been difficult”.
“There’s a lot of frustration out there for customers and very understandably and unfortunately in some cases, it’s gotten a bit heated. But look, we are four weeks in I’m confident in time it’ll sort itself out but it has been tough,” he said.
Mr O’Hara, the owner of a Spar store in Clontarf, said customer frustration was understandable.
However the CSNA has issued over 3,000 leaflets and posters to members to highlight the issue for customers, he said.
Mr O’Hara explained that the international barcodes are not being read properly by the machine.
Retailers are charging deposits as they are supposed to, he said, but clear labelling is not on all of the bottles.
The owner of Clelands Supermarkets in Laois and Tipperary told the programme that the roll-out of the scheme has been frustrating and the machine he installed for customers did not work during the initial stages.
“For the first two weeks we had the machine, we turned it off because basically the bottles and cans weren’t going through the machine,” Alex Cleland said
While the machine is now operating, Mr Cleland said that customers have reported ongoing problems with the machine because it is not reading international codes correctly.
He explained that more codes are being added to products every week and these codes need to be manually inputted by the manufacturers of the machine.
Mr Cleland said the scheme was not well thought out and the feedback from smaller retailers was ignored.
He said Cork County Council are discussing putting the machines in recycling centres because they can see the real risk and expense that they are posing to small businesses.
“I have three businesses but can only afford to install one machine,” he added.
