Sorry but you're wrong in just needing to have the barcodes legible for the machine to accept it. Cans particularly, if they have a dent won't be accepted. You have to try get the dent out of the can, even if it's nowhere near where the code is being read before it'll be accepted. If the scanner just needing to read some bar code or QR code and then would accept them I'd feel a lot better about the machines but it's pretty clear there's more to it than that - including the weight of the item. Try recycle a plastic bottle with even a very small amount of water in the bottom and it'll be rejected, so there must be some weighing mechanism within the machine too. I suspect that there's a dimensional measurement taken of the container as well by the machine hence the dents causing failures.
It's the setting of the thresholds on the machine that need to be relaxed because at the moment they're rejecting cans and bottles with marks clearly legible and on which a deposit has been paid. All to the benefit of the company whose machine decides whether it'll pay you back your own money or not. At least that's been my multiple experience with the shagging things.
of crushing cans when he's pissed and I have to bring them to the recycling. I straighten them as best i can, sending them barcode side up on the conveyor. It might not initially process one or two, but with an adjustment or two it takes it. I haven't "lost one yet"
