Three Towns residents could soon turn their glass into cash if plans are approved.

Aldi have submitted plans to erect an extension to the side of existing retail store and the installation of a deposit return scheme building at its Saltcoats Braes store.

Work will include alterations to the car park, installation of electric vehicle charging points, a store plant and associated works.

The government previously announced the Deposit Return Scheme with the goal of ensuring more containers will be recycled into high quality items.

A reverse vending machine (RVM), in its simplest form, the unit will accept empty beverage containers and returns a reward (either money or some other payment method) to the user.

The user inserts the empty beverage container where it is scanned, identified and determined to be an eligible container.

Units will have a number of customer facing recycle points for glass, can and polyethylene terephthalate and capable of collecting up to 60 containers per minute.

At the end of each deposit a customer will be recompensed at a rate of 20p per unit deposited.

Plans state that the machine will only accept waste types approved by the deposit return scheme and will be constructed to capture any potential leachate which would be disposed of through the existing foul system.

The unit will operate within the existing store operating hours and Aldi’s plans state the noise level will not exceed approximately 45 dBA in any event.

All returned goods will be manually transferred from the unit to the warehouse for logistics collection by store staff.

Collections will then either be made by the Scheme Administrator or be backhauled through the existing service arrangements.

There will be no collection vehicles operating in the main body of the car parks.