A major supermarket chain has introduced a "reverse vending machine" at one of its locations in Ireland, offering residents a no-fuss way to promote cleaner community spaces.
Spar International announced that its Eurospar Supermarket in Hartstown has installed a machine allowing users to feed empty containers such as plastic bottles and aluminum cans into it for recycling.
These contraptions have been popping up worldwide to help communities manage waste. In Scotland, for instance, Coca-Cola teamed up with an environmental nonprofit to reward students for using one of these machines.
Taking the guesswork out of recycling is one way to improve abysmal recycling rates, particularly for plastics, which don't easily break down in nature.
While recycling rates vary depending on the country, around 86% of plastics ended up in landfills in 2019 in the United States, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
That doesn't mean all unrecycled plastics were confined there, though. The International Union for Conservation of Nature estimates that approximately 22 million tons of plastic litter end up in the environment each year, degrading ecosystems and threatening public health worldwide.
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As for Ireland, it places recycling rates for plastic packaging waste at roughly 30%, per the latest waste-data release from the country's Environmental Protection Agency. However, it warns that packaging waste generation has increased nearly four times as quickly as recycling rates.
Since plastics stick around for generations — including as microplastics in our air, water, and soil — reducing plastic consumption is one of the best ways to contribute to a cleaner tomorrow.
However, plenty of plastics are already in circulation. Fortunately, Spar International's support of this eco-friendly initiative demonstrates that actions like these are welcome, not to mention profitable.
In Hartstown, shoppers at Eurospar Supermarket will have a fast and hygienic way to return their used beverage containers, and the machine will do the rest of the work. Envipco, the machine's developer, says it handles bottles and cans at the same time, and users simply need to pour their bags of recyclables into the processor for sorting.
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"We are proud to be the first in Ireland to introduce this innovative solution, reinforcing our commitment to sustainability and our role as a responsible community retailer," Eurospar Group chief executive Chris Furey said in the release.
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