I only lasted two trips to the recycling center. The only thing worse than schlepping about with other people’s stinking, leaking, heavy rubbish is shlepping 1.7 miles with other people’s stinking, leaking, heavy rubbish.
The only half redeeming feature of the trip was Tesco’s attempt at a smart recycling center at which you could earn clubcard points for recycling. The prospect was initially exciting, followed by amusing due to just how shoddy and hopeless the whole thing was and finally just infuriating.
You have to diligently put each piece of recycling through one small hole and wait for the contraption to acknowledge it before you’re allowed to put through the next. All this is done with the confidence that you will earn tesco points at the end of it which can be put towards wine.
I stood in front of the little screen and the hole for about half an hour before it spat out my card minus any additional recycling points and left me with various items it just didn’t fancy recycling.
I looked it up and this machine cost £150,000. Apparently developed by a Norwegian technology company called Torma, the machine is “intended to make recycling easier for visitors to the supermarket and also help increase recycling rates”.
Maybe the Scandinavians haven’t got it all as figured out as we thought, because Tesco would have been better off spending £150,000 on paying some unemployed Glaswegian to weigh your recycling on big scale and hand you a complimentary £4 bottle of plonk.
