BCRS Malta, which is running the new beverage container recycling scheme, is insisting that having retailers collect returned beverage containers as part of the scheme is being introduced to have a "good level of customer service".
The company was replying to a letter in Saturday's Times of Malta by Mellieħa shopkeeper Dane Cauchi who claimed the obligation to accept returned beverage containers as part of a new recycling scheme is going to overburden small business owners.
BCRS Malta also said the obligation of the manual collection has been enshrined in the law regulating the scheme when it was first passed in 2019.
The scheme being run by BCRS Malta includes an obligation by shop owners to accept empty bottles from their customers if that particular beverage is sold in their shop.
In his letter, Cauchi said that throughout negotiations, the RVM (reverse vending machines) network was the only way for customers to return their bottles and that grocery outlets and confectionaries were never mentioned as points of collection.
He also said that previously, business owners had not been informed of the requirement to accept returns manually at their shops.
“My opposition to this U-turn is due to the fact that small shops cannot cope with their daily working chores and simultaneously become a bring-in site for plastic bottles. One would need to employ a full-time person to check the bottles returned and create the space where to store them,” he said.
“BCRS informed us that clients cannot bring more than 50 bottles at once. This is laughable, as 10 persons with 10 bottles each would result in a staggering 100 bottles.”
With shops like his staying typically staying open for 12-hour stretches, the situation would become too challenging to deal with constantly, Cauchi said.
“This scheme has been coming for years, so it is disappointing and distressing to see it turn into a fiasco before it even starts.”
A €7 million investment
BCRS CEO Edward Chetcuti told Times of Malta that the obligation for retailers to collect returned beverage containers from clients was introduced to have a “good level of customer service”, believing that nonetheless, the majority of the public would still choose to make use of the RVM network.
“The obligation to do so is not something that BCRS Malta Limited has brought out of the blue but is part and parcel of the legislation, passed through our parliament in 2019, that always stated that retail outlets may be tasked to undertake manual collection."
BCRS Malta Limited has invested in excess of €7 million in the RVM Machine network and we are certain that the majority of consumers shall choose these machines as their preferred method of recycling beverage containers, he said.
“One may understand that the easiest thing would be to criticise a system before it starts because every change brings about resistance and hesitance from one and all.”
Chetcuti said that the fact that the country puts millions of beverage containers on the market every year cannot be denied and consistently Malta has had low recycling rates that have to be addressed.
The formation of BCRS, he continued, included representation from various entities that sell beverages and that private enterprise had risen to the occasion to build a system based on best practices to collect transport and recycle some 230 million containers every year.
This came with an €18 million investment that included a reception centre and processing plant, as well as a network of 320 RVMs around the country.
“All the public hubs went through a rigorous process of approval through various government entities and local councils before being placed in areas that would render them accessible to the public but also at the same time not being too cumbersome and in the way,” he said.
“These hubs require a certain footprint to have an effective return of recycled material which is ultimately the goal that shall help Malta achieve targets that to date have been unattainable.”