ALDI has submitted plans for the erection of reverse vending machines at its North Berwick and Tranent stores.
The initiative comes as the supermarket works alongside industry manufacturers to help prepare Scotland for the introduction of its deposit return scheme (DRS) in 2022.
Much like the official DRS scheme, Aldi’s proposals would see customers pay a 20p deposit on the top of purchases of beverages in PET bottles, glass and cans which will be returned once disposed off in the machines.
Plans show that the units will be located in the car park and be in operation in conjunction with store opening hours. All returned goods will be manually transferred from the units to the in-store warehouse for logistics collection by store staff – no collection vehicles will operate in the main body of the car parks, Aldi said.
A statement accompanying the plans read, “Aldi has a high volume of footfall and in line with other larger retailers it would not be viable to accept returns manually. As such an automated reverse vending machine will be installed on all of our premises to allow for automatic returns to take place. This will provide an efficient and user friendly return point encompassing state of the art recycling technology to drive an increased uptake in the scheme from consumers and support its overall success.
“The scheme aims to capture 90% of containers for recycling by the third year of operation. Aldi anticipates that it will be a net contributor to the scheme and in many cases collecting 110-120% of containers due to the resource and investment it is committing to the success of the scheme.”
