Reverse vending machine to promote plastic recycling

New incentives for recycling will be given to visitors of the UK’s most popular tourist attractions. Indeed, people can now enter the attractions with an half-price entry ticket in exchange for used plastic drinks bottles.

The idea is being pursued by theme park operator Merlin, in partnership with Coca Cola: lots of so called “reverse vending machines” will be installed outside the entrances of Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington World of Adventures and Legoland. The aim of this project is to reduce plastic pollution by boosting plastic recycling and reducing plastic litter. The machines will give a discount to whoever deposits any 500ml plastic bottle at any of the 30 Merlin attractions in the UK.

The initiative will run until mid-October and it’s also the consequence of a Coca Cola report which reveals that 64% of Britons would recycle more if they were rewarded instantly. Indeed, the problem is very heavy: just 43% of the 13bn plastic bottles sold each year in the UK are recycled. 

«We want to reward people for doing the right thing by recycling their bottles and hope to encourage some people who wouldn’t otherwise have done so - said Jon Woods, general manager of Coca-Cola UK & Ireland - All of our bottles can be recycled and we want to get as many of them back as possible so they can be turned into new bottles and not end up as litter».

Also the Co-op, the first UK retailer to set up a project to award customers with reverse vending machines, is saying that thousands of visitors to major summer music festivals are giving positive feedback. Frozen food giant Iceland and supermarket chain Morrisons have also launched small-scale trials of reverse vending machines.