Member

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about what is “soiled” and how many dribbles of liquid would count as not being empty. Reverse vending machines can determine if a container is unsuitable for return. The parameters of this can be built into the specification of the machines and will follow the reasonable criteria in the regulations, which include a container being soiled, not empty or not intact. We have engaged with international schemes and reverse vending machine manufacturers to understand the capabilities of the technology that is deployed in schemes around the world. In the rare cases in which reverse vending machines have incorrectly rejected a container, return point operators are able manually to process the return.