5 ms·

German plastics group highlights success of bottle deposits in recycling

68 points by endswapper 10y ago

ce4 10y ago
That high return rate is due to the deposit of 25 cent (€) per bottle. Water (20ct/1.5L) comes cheaper per bottle than its bottle deposit. There are people who collect bottles in cities for a living even.
- pulse7 10y ago
  This is what government can do for our environment: one simple law for obligatory 25 cent deposit/bottle.
- endswapper 10y ago
  Bottle deposits are incredibly effective. Long-term I'd like to see deposit programs for all materials. California, also mentioned in the article, has people using bottle deposits as an income at $.05/$.10 per bottle.
chronial 10y ago
Missing in the article: the deposit for PET bottles is 25 eurocents. I am living in Germany and I love the fact that it's rather high. I want to recycle, but I'm also lazy :). Getting an euro for 4 bottles brought back is a nice incentive to do so and a lot more tangible than “the environment“.
mxfh 10y ago
This also the story of failure and counterproductive incentives of the so called Mehrwegquote, multiple use deposit bottles, which used to be above 70% in the 90s and is now as low as 40% and was scrapped altogether as an environmental politics target last summer, the original target was 80%. The single use plastic bottle deposit was introduced at multiple of the cost of the multi use bottle to boost use of the latter, but somehow that turned out to have the opposite effect. Mostly because of by having a deposit on the single use, it is perceived by most as being equal to multi use in it's environmental cost footprint and single use having less logistical requirements for retail. Some German Background: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwegpfand#Die_Entwicklung_bis_heute https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwegpfand#Die_Entwicklung_bi... http://refillables.grrn.org/content/western-europes-experience-refillable-beverage-containers http://refillables.grrn.org/content/western-europes-experien... http://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/10497-the-mystery-of-bottlecan-deposits-pfand/?page=5#comment-2366929 http://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/10497-the-mystery-...
- subpixel 10y ago
  That's disheartening to read. I found the way beer bottles were reused in Germany truly impressive, especially coming from the US and knowing the scale of waste the German system avoided.
  - mxfh 10y ago
    Beer bottles are doing fine, but pretty much everything else (bottled water, soft drinks) went away to be replaced by single use. You can still do a beer Club Mate diet by exclusively using returnables.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      The beer bottle system has also come under pressure. It used to be that most beer was sold locally, and that most breweries used the same bottles anyway. Now, they choices have expanded and you might by a bavarian beer in Hamburg. And many have started to use individually styled bottles to strengthen their brand. These go to a local plant where, more often than not, they're now destroyed and recycled instead of returned to their origin to be reused.
      - subpixel 10y ago
        [in old man's voice] I swear Augustiner tasted so much better when you could only get it in Bavaria.
  - sveme 10y ago
    Beer is actually not such an issue as most people prefer to drink their beer from glass bottles. Water and soft drinks are another story. Though I would really like to see an ecological assessment whether the bottle reuse system is more eco-friendly than the single-use system with deposit and recycling.
    - mxfh 10y ago
      Single use PETs are not that much worse or even better, for larger bottles according to this Swiss study: https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/36446.pdf https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/36446.p... [EN: p25ff]
edwhitesell 10y ago
The state of Michigan had (has?) deposits of $0.10 US on all bottles & cans when I grew up there. I never noticed how much it kept bottles, cans and other items from becoming litter along roads and parking lots until I lived in states with no deposit. It was a nice incentive to go out and pick up trash, because the cans/bottles can really add up.
- badwolf 10y ago
  Similarly to how Austin banned single use plastic bags. When I visit other cities, I notice them everywhere, stuck in fences, trees and bushes, along roads, under overpasses, etc...
  - jorgen123 10y ago
    They call it urban tumbleweed. And where people care about keeping their town clean, tax money gets spent on removing the tumbleweed[1]. Which is why these bag bans are a general good thing. Source: http://1bagatatime.com/learn/plastic-bag-clean-costs/ http://1bagatatime.com/learn/plastic-bag-clean-costs/
  - dx034 10y ago
    Since plastic bags have to cost 5p in England (except small supermarkets), the use decreased by ~85%. Shows how many of these are given out even though they're not needed. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36917174 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36917174
- beart 10y ago
  Still has it. You can really see how helpful this is by going to a sporting event with beer and open bleachers. You will see children running around collecting the cans just about as fast as you can drop them. It's a double win because the people drinking can be lazy and the kids get the money.
- tunap 10y ago
  Michigan still does, mom was scolding me a few months back when I was visiting because the automated machines don't take crushed cans/bottles. Where I live I have no financial reason to recycle them, but I am incentivized to reduce the volume to decrease frequency of trips to the recycler.
patrickk 10y ago
The bottle deposit is called "pfand" here you can see a machine in operation in a supermarket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLKmr0uVhWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLKmr0uVhWo Some more details on the program: https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/18rpwa/i_have_a_few_questions_about_pfand_and_those/ https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/18rpwa/i_have_a_fe... As an expat in Germany, I was very impressed by the whole system. You can scan your bottles, get a receipt and use that to subtract from your purchase in the supermarket (or get cash). If you have an empty beer crate full of empty bottles, the bottom of the pfand machine in the video above has a slot and a conveyor belt that scans the amount of bottles in the crate and adds it to your total (8c per glass bottle). If you order your groceries online, the delivery guy will collect your bottles and issue the discount on the spot. Homeless people often gather enormous amounts of bottles after events, such as Oktoberfest. People sometimes casually drinking on the street will leave glass bottles next to the bin so that the homeless guys have an easy time finding the pfand bottle to recycle.
- danielbln 10y ago
  As a German, the thing I like most is that you never ever see bottle trash lying around in parks or on the street, as any stray bottle is quickly (and I mean within minutes) swept up by the homeless/less fortunate.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    It's one of the most successful top->down redistribution projects.
    - dx034 10y ago
      And at the same time there's no tax question and the rate of fraud has been very low.
  - tommorris 10y ago
    Last time I was in Germany, I saw a few homeless men sitting at the side of the road, asking a family who were walking to church if they could have the empty plastic bottles. All three of the children rolled their empty bottles across the street to the homeless men. They had a box with quite a few empty plastic water bottles in it. One of many things that impressed me in Germany.
philfrasty 10y ago
There was this funny case here in Germany a couple of days ago where a man made 45.000€ in bottle-deposit with scanning the same bottle over and over again. The judge called it a „logistical masterpiece“ because the guy had to scan roughly 180.000 times. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.n-tv.de%2Fpanorama%2FPfandbetrueger-ergaunert-44-362-75-Euro-article19109861.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...
- cnvogel 10y ago
  You forgot to quote the funniest part... "This is already logistically a masterpiece," quotes the "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger" the judge from the process. "You did not have anything else to do this day." The accused replied, "I've put a radio on the line because I was too bored." „Das ist ja schon logistisch eine Meisterleistung“, zitiert die Zeitung den Richter. Der 37-Jährige habe den ganzen Tag nichts anderes gemacht, als den Automaten zu befüllen. Der Angeklagte antwortete demnach: „Ich habe ein Radio danebengestellt, weil es mir sonst zu langweilig war.“
- cJ0th 10y ago
  That was funny indeed. I also remember reading about a homeless professional bottle picker who used the money he earned to buy a Bahncard 100 (A ticket which allows you to get on any train for a year) so that he could sleep in ICEs (German high speed trains)

68 points by endswapper 10y ago

ce4 10y ago

That high return rate is due to the deposit of 25 cent (€) per bottle. Water (20ct/1.5L) comes cheaper per bottle than its bottle deposit. There are people who collect bottles in cities for a living even.

pulse7 10y ago
This is what government can do for our environment: one simple law for obligatory 25 cent deposit/bottle.
endswapper 10y ago
Bottle deposits are incredibly effective. Long-term I'd like to see deposit programs for all materials. California, also mentioned in the article, has people using bottle deposits as an income at $.05/$.10 per bottle.

chronial 10y ago

Missing in the article: the deposit for PET bottles is 25 eurocents. I am living in Germany and I love the fact that it's rather high. I want to recycle, but I'm also lazy :). Getting an euro for 4 bottles brought back is a nice incentive to do so and a lot more tangible than “the environment“.

mxfh 10y ago

This also the story of failure and counterproductive incentives of the so called Mehrwegquote, multiple use deposit bottles, which used to be above 70% in the 90s and is now as low as 40% and was scrapped altogether as an environmental politics target last summer, the original target was 80%. The single use plastic bottle deposit was introduced at multiple of the cost of the multi use bottle to boost use of the latter, but somehow that turned out to have the opposite effect. Mostly because of by having a deposit on the single use, it is perceived by most as being equal to multi use in it's environmental cost footprint and single use having less logistical requirements for retail. Some German Background: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwegpfand#Die_Entwicklung_bis_heute https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwegpfand#Die_Entwicklung_bi... http://refillables.grrn.org/content/western-europes-experience-refillable-beverage-containers http://refillables.grrn.org/content/western-europes-experien... http://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/10497-the-mystery-of-bottlecan-deposits-pfand/?page=5#comment-2366929 http://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/10497-the-mystery-...

subpixel 10y ago
That's disheartening to read. I found the way beer bottles were reused in Germany truly impressive, especially coming from the US and knowing the scale of waste the German system avoided.
- mxfh 10y ago
  Beer bottles are doing fine, but pretty much everything else (bottled water, soft drinks) went away to be replaced by single use. You can still do a beer Club Mate diet by exclusively using returnables.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    The beer bottle system has also come under pressure. It used to be that most beer was sold locally, and that most breweries used the same bottles anyway. Now, they choices have expanded and you might by a bavarian beer in Hamburg. And many have started to use individually styled bottles to strengthen their brand. These go to a local plant where, more often than not, they're now destroyed and recycled instead of returned to their origin to be reused.
    - subpixel 10y ago
      [in old man's voice] I swear Augustiner tasted so much better when you could only get it in Bavaria.
- sveme 10y ago
  Beer is actually not such an issue as most people prefer to drink their beer from glass bottles. Water and soft drinks are another story. Though I would really like to see an ecological assessment whether the bottle reuse system is more eco-friendly than the single-use system with deposit and recycling.
  - mxfh 10y ago
    Single use PETs are not that much worse or even better, for larger bottles according to this Swiss study: https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/36446.pdf https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/36446.p... [EN: p25ff]

edwhitesell 10y ago

The state of Michigan had (has?) deposits of $0.10 US on all bottles & cans when I grew up there. I never noticed how much it kept bottles, cans and other items from becoming litter along roads and parking lots until I lived in states with no deposit. It was a nice incentive to go out and pick up trash, because the cans/bottles can really add up.

badwolf 10y ago
Similarly to how Austin banned single use plastic bags. When I visit other cities, I notice them everywhere, stuck in fences, trees and bushes, along roads, under overpasses, etc...
- jorgen123 10y ago
  They call it urban tumbleweed. And where people care about keeping their town clean, tax money gets spent on removing the tumbleweed[1]. Which is why these bag bans are a general good thing. Source: http://1bagatatime.com/learn/plastic-bag-clean-costs/ http://1bagatatime.com/learn/plastic-bag-clean-costs/
- dx034 10y ago
  Since plastic bags have to cost 5p in England (except small supermarkets), the use decreased by ~85%. Shows how many of these are given out even though they're not needed. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36917174 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36917174
beart 10y ago
Still has it. You can really see how helpful this is by going to a sporting event with beer and open bleachers. You will see children running around collecting the cans just about as fast as you can drop them. It's a double win because the people drinking can be lazy and the kids get the money.
tunap 10y ago
Michigan still does, mom was scolding me a few months back when I was visiting because the automated machines don't take crushed cans/bottles. Where I live I have no financial reason to recycle them, but I am incentivized to reduce the volume to decrease frequency of trips to the recycler.

patrickk 10y ago

The bottle deposit is called "pfand" here you can see a machine in operation in a supermarket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLKmr0uVhWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLKmr0uVhWo Some more details on the program: https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/18rpwa/i_have_a_few_questions_about_pfand_and_those/ https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/18rpwa/i_have_a_fe... As an expat in Germany, I was very impressed by the whole system. You can scan your bottles, get a receipt and use that to subtract from your purchase in the supermarket (or get cash). If you have an empty beer crate full of empty bottles, the bottom of the pfand machine in the video above has a slot and a conveyor belt that scans the amount of bottles in the crate and adds it to your total (8c per glass bottle). If you order your groceries online, the delivery guy will collect your bottles and issue the discount on the spot. Homeless people often gather enormous amounts of bottles after events, such as Oktoberfest. People sometimes casually drinking on the street will leave glass bottles next to the bin so that the homeless guys have an easy time finding the pfand bottle to recycle.

danielbln 10y ago
As a German, the thing I like most is that you never ever see bottle trash lying around in parks or on the street, as any stray bottle is quickly (and I mean within minutes) swept up by the homeless/less fortunate.
- matt4077 10y ago
  It's one of the most successful top->down redistribution projects.
  - dx034 10y ago
    And at the same time there's no tax question and the rate of fraud has been very low.
- tommorris 10y ago
  Last time I was in Germany, I saw a few homeless men sitting at the side of the road, asking a family who were walking to church if they could have the empty plastic bottles. All three of the children rolled their empty bottles across the street to the homeless men. They had a box with quite a few empty plastic water bottles in it. One of many things that impressed me in Germany.

philfrasty 10y ago

There was this funny case here in Germany a couple of days ago where a man made 45.000€ in bottle-deposit with scanning the same bottle over and over again. The judge called it a „logistical masterpiece“ because the guy had to scan roughly 180.000 times. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.n-tv.de%2Fpanorama%2FPfandbetrueger-ergaunert-44-362-75-Euro-article19109861.html&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev...

cnvogel 10y ago
You forgot to quote the funniest part... "This is already logistically a masterpiece," quotes the "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger" the judge from the process. "You did not have anything else to do this day." The accused replied, "I've put a radio on the line because I was too bored." „Das ist ja schon logistisch eine Meisterleistung“, zitiert die Zeitung den Richter. Der 37-Jährige habe den ganzen Tag nichts anderes gemacht, als den Automaten zu befüllen. Der Angeklagte antwortete demnach: „Ich habe ein Radio danebengestellt, weil es mir sonst zu langweilig war.“
cJ0th 10y ago
That was funny indeed. I also remember reading about a homeless professional bottle picker who used the money he earned to buy a Bahncard 100 (A ticket which allows you to get on any train for a year) so that he could sleep in ICEs (German high speed trains)