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In April 2001, Cronigs installed an automated
bottle and can redemption system to replace their manual procedure of
collecting, sorting and issuing receipts. Cronigs offered the very first
recycling and redemption center on the Island. Everybody is pleased with
the new method, as we no longer have to navigate the broken glass, sticky
residue, or occasional bees, that came with the territory.
Just as before, the hours for access to the machines are the same as Cronig's
business hours, and the facility is located at the Vineyard Haven store
in the shed which housed the old operation. There the similarities end.
The new system takes up far less space, and is made up of three machines;
one to crush cans, another to shred plastic bottles, and a third to collect
glass bottles. When a container is inserted, it is spun around until the
scanner reads the bar code on its label. If the product was originally
purchased from Cronigs, it drops into a chamber that crushes or shreds
and then stores what is left. If the container isn't a brand that Cronigs'
carries, the machine rejects it; this includes beer bottles. Once the
machines have accepted the appropriate containers, they print out a bar
coded receipt that can be redeemed in the store for up to $6 cash, or
customer credit toward the purchase of groceries.
Probably the greatest environmental benefit of the new method is its ability
to greatly reduce the volume of material being shipped off Island to be
reprocessed. Since the cans and plastic bottles are crushed and shredded,
they take up 28 times less space than before. This means that only one
truck heads for Worcester for every five that used to make the crossing
- a substantial reduction in fossil fuels consumed, wear and tear on trucks,
and reduced labor.
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