Iceland responds to young environmentalist’s request with sixth plastic reverse vending machine
Iceland has extended
its trial of reverse vending machines to a sixth store.
The frozen food retailer has installed a new
machine for customers to recycle plastic bottles in its recently opened store
in Merry Hill Shopping Centre in Birmingham. It had previously become the first
UK retailer to begin trialling the machines in stores, in May last year.
The move was prompted by a letter to Iceland MD
Richard Walker from a 19-year-old environmentalist who had previously travelled
nine miles to take 1,000 empty bottles to Iceland’s Wolverhampton store, which
had been his nearest branch with a machine.
More than a million plastic bottles have so far
been collected by Iceland in five machines in the Wolverhampton, Mold, Fulham
and Musselburgh stores, as well as at its head office in Deeside.
Iceland said almost all its customers had responded “extremely positively” to the move, with 96% of shoppers believing the scheme should be extended to all retailers.
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