10.0 Reverse Vending Machine Research


The most appealing aspect of using this service is that it gives users and incentive to recycle is the fact that they can add another stream of income in the form of vouchers which can be used off of your shopping depending on the store that the reverse vending machine is located in.

This opens up doors to a whole economy and market for recycling, as there is currently a lack of recycled plastic for large corporations such as Coca Cola, as stated in a BBC article "Coca Cola has committed to using 50% recycled material in its bottles by 2020 but availability of recyclable plastic is limited." (BBC News, 2018) This then builds a whole market and in places such as Germany the homeless use this as a way of making money, this could potentially be scaled up to an industrial level.
Research:
I took it upon myself to test the system to see how well the reverse recycling machines work by seeing firstly how easily accessible they are. After personally going out and looking for these machines in two different super stores including Tesco and Sainsburys I failed to locate any, I was informed by a member of staff that they used to be available however have been removed.

I then further pursued to locate the location of the machines by emailing the company directly responsible for their manufacturing, despite my efforts they were not of any help.

After contacting the company and trying to locate the machines for myself, it appears the practicality of these machines are not quite there. I have sent a follow up email and if that fails then I will look for an alternative solution to the problem.

Next Steps:
After doing some research I discovered that more recently Iceland has introduced the Reverse Vending Machines (Evening Standard, 2018), I will go and have a look and post an update in the next post.

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