Exactly ........thinking. No one thinks , just consume and profit. There is room for recycling in business models. How about every bottle ( plastic or glass) has a £1 deposit. Insert your card in the machine and pop your returns in for your refund. Could be a fiver to help focus minds.
Yes Varche, that would be the ideal. However, as I stated recycling takes space (separate from any foodstuffs), cost of machinery and staff, plus transportation costs. Who will pay for that? The supermarkets will not be happy to as it will affect their bottom lines profit. Maybe there should not only be a deposit of £1, but a handling charge of say (out of thin air) 25p, or whatever it will cost the supermarkets per item.
Those small "recycling" machines featured on news reports are frankly laughable to anyone in the retail trade. If you see what huge bales are created of crushed plastic bottles, you will recognise the volume and therefore size of the problem any superstore supermarket would have to handle. A hopper in one of those aforementioned featured machines could never handle those quantities.
Another way of understanding the problem is doing what I am trained to do; calculating multiples on the retail floor. Not only in terms of profit per item, per customer, per store in your company, but the handling and storage issues. In the old days of glass deposits we had to build additional storage facilities for the mass stacking of crates and bottles, per store. With increased consumer demand of product in bottles and the need for larger quantities, the multiplication issues came in and demanded the introduction of non-deposit, large quantity, plastic bottles that came in, and went out to the consumer X thousands. Stand in your major supermarket at the checkouts and calculate how many large plastic bottles are being sold per customer, per minute, per hour, per week, per store in the retail group. You will then understand the logistical problems of consumer recycling through the retailer.
There are answers to what is a problem we MUST solve. Just like simple ones such as I in a small block of flats not being able to recycle through the council "special recycling" bin scheme; I have to collect my recycling and take it once a fortnight to the local major County Recycling Centre. However that Centre does not have any facilities at all for the recycling of plastic, and it all goes in "General Waste"!! But at least we have one of those centres, unlike some areas where I understand they are being closed!!
That is the real issue; no central, integrated National policy on recycling. Until we start as a Nation to go in one direction, the buck of recycling will just be passed from one council, retailer, contractor, consumer, to another!