BEIRUT- At almost all of Spinneys branches in Lebanon, you will find a colorful ReVa reverse vending machine – an innovative recycling solution that gives you incentive to recycle. You just feed your empty plastic water bottles into the machine and get a coupon, once you’ve recycled 40 bottles, you get one for free. The payoff may not sound so substantial, but the effects on the environment are significant. ReVa machines can also be found at AUB!
As a society and as a world, we tend to over-consume, and the biggest culprit is plastic water bottles; they are widely used in homes, schools, offices, and fast food joints. Waste management has become a huge problem in the world, with landfills growing to enormous sizes, and recycling initiatives remaining miserably low. The bottled water industry continues to cause a severe strain on the environment, and the main solution at hand to this environmental damage is recycling – something we can all partake in.
Because most of us live our entire lives without ever seeing a landfill, or seeing the huge plastic trash “islands” that have been forming in our oceans, we tend to have an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach to pollution, which is why it is important to raise awareness and maximize recycling projects, like Spinneys has managed to do with the ReVa machine.
Another initiative we hope gets adopted soon would be the elimination of plastic bags in supermarkets. We all know how it works in Lebanon, your groceries get bagged in tens of small plastic bags that barely make it to the car before tearing; they are impractical and gravely harmful to the environment.
We should all be a part of this exceptional program, and pressure other supermarkets to follow suit.
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