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Here in Norway a half litre or smaller container has a deposit of 2 kr, bigger containers are 3 kr (22 and 33 US cent respectively). But it isn't the size of t

Here in Norway a half litre or smaller container has a deposit of 2 kr, bigger containers are 3 kr (22 and 33 US cent respectively). But it isn't the size of the deposit that drives the return rate (95% or more here in Norway) it is the ease of doing it. Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return even if they were not purchased in that shop and even if they are of a different brand. So every supermarket has a reverse vending machine [1] where you deposit the bottles and cans and get a receipt that you can exchange for money or goods at the till. [1] Usually from Tomra: https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse-vending/deposit-return-schemes https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse-vending/deposit-...

Aissen 5y ago
Saw that at your neighboor's in Copenhagen, and after the first outrage of paying +50cts per drink, I understood that I was seeing a glimpse the future… If littering is equivalent to throwing money, you simply won't do it. Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though…
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  > Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though… It becomes an alternative form of giving them your change, and you conveniently don't have to carry the bottle home. Although I've lived in a city where an old lady was known to roam the parks and was very pushy about wanting you to surrender your bottles.
- oaiey 5y ago
  > Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though… It becomes a respectful cooperation. When you party in a park, you place your containers next to a trash so a homeless can pick it up without searching the trash. They basically help you partying hard (and not caring/carrying about the bottles) and earn (by hard work) a bit of money.
  - runj__ 5y ago
    I don't know about "respectful" for both parties. Bottle collectors trying to take/steal not yet empty bottles and cans has become more of a rule than an exception in parks in central Stockholm. I'm still very much in favour of container deposit but I'm growing really tired of forceful collecting.
    - lillecarl 5y ago
      The people you're referring to are likely not the same kind of people who collect bottles in other countries. My friend has this jokish ticks screaming out "Min pant"(roughly translates into "my cans) when we're a bit drunk, referring to this exact problem. It's inappropriate to go into further detail than to say he's not making fun of any Swedes. It's one of the downsides of free movement within the EU when you're a country that's built on assuming most people will do right for themselves, the it breaks.
      - _0ffh 5y ago
        >"Min pant"(roughly translates into "my cans) Sounds more like "my deposit" to me.
        lillecarl 5y ago
        Sure, I find it easier to translate English to Swedish than the other way around I guess. Though they are referring to your soon to be recycled cans and bottles when semi-agressively trying to steal them from you.
        Symbiote 5y ago
        It would be "my pawn", translated more literally. Some people find this amusing.
        freeflight 5y ago
        Sounds like "Mein Pfand" to me.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  > If littering is equivalent to throwing money, you simply won't do it. I have learnt that when organising events at work (sponsored by workplace), you have to charge people. Any amount like €5, its two cups of coffee but turn-up rate is in high 90% of people that paid upfront. Without charging any money its 50-60% The number of people that sign up were pretty similar, so I hazard a guess that risk aversion was at play. Its a powerful tool even if you know about it.
- ratww 5y ago
  > Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though… That's kind of convenient actually IMO. I get rid of the bottle, I don't have to give them cash. Win-win.
- cafard 5y ago
  Some years ago, New York passed a law on recycling. For some reason, people seemed to be surprised when it turned out that those showing up at the grocery store with carts full of recyclables were neither lawyers nor stock traders, but rather the homeless.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    in California there are fewer dropoffs in stores but the bottles tend to come from residential recycling bins, which were raided while they were waiting for a truck to pick them up.
    - QuarterReptile 5y ago
      In my experience, that's common, but so is people jumping your fence to raid your cans before you've put them out. And, should you ever try to recoup the 'deposit' by going to the recycling center, you'll spend 1+ hour in line being hounded by homeless people to give them your cans. All of it creates way more incentive to just throw your cans in the trash so you don't have to deal with any of that.
      - mrexroad 5y ago
        Bay Area here. My experience at recycling centers has always been quick and painless. Took over 60 lbs of cans and a bunch of scrap copper the other week. No line, no hounding.
        QuarterReptile 5y ago
        My experiences in Monterey (2015) and San Diego (2019) were negative. It is good to hear that the particular issue either is not universal or has improved with time.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      It's still a positive, at least if the recycling system works similar to in the EU. Here, food containers have fairly strict limits on what recycled waste can be used to make them. Returned bottles and cans are clean enough to be made into new food packaging, but ordinary household recycling waste is not.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  Not in Norway, not enough homeless people and far too few discarded bottles and cans. I pick up the occasional beer can on the beach near where I live but they are almost always Polish and of course have no deposit.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  I am not a rich man but the homeless guy needs the 50 cents more than I do. And I rather have homeless people collect cans than making street music to be honest...
  - ratww 5y ago
    I always assumed street musicians and homeless people were different people
  - necovek 5y ago
    While I don't see a connection between homeless people and street musicians, I am intrigued by your complaint of the street musicians? My kids are fascinated by them, and as long as they are not taking up too much space to make it impossible to pass through the street (and if they do, I'll happily pass through their "stage"), I am quite happy to have the streets livened up by some music too. Not all of it is good or to my taste, but it certainly beats empty streets, especially so during cold winter months.
    - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
      They block the shopping streets and their music is terrible. There are no empty streets in the Netherlands on a Saturday and there is nothing more depressing than a Eastern European on an accordion.
      - kwhitefoot 5y ago
        Perhaps the better Eastern European accordion players stay home. I used to visit Krakow often on business and really enjoyed listening to musicians playing in the main square. Also it wasn't just accordion players, there were all sorts, amateurs, music students, professional musicians playing a wide variety of instruments and styles. It was worth having some cash to put in the bucket.
      - necovek 5y ago
        Isn't it the people that gather around them to listen that block the streets? That's usually my experience.
- swlp21 5y ago
  > homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection I lived in Alberta 10 years ago and this was totally a thing. One homeless guy hung around the apartment and if you were carrying drink containers he would come and say "Can I take them to the store for you?". Of course, he meant could he get the deposit money on them too. He would hang around until he could fill two or three large garbage bags then head off to the return center to collect the deposit money. In all the time I lived there, I never found out where the actual return center was as I never needed to. The few $ involved was no loss to me (or anyone else in the apartment) but went towards the homeless guy being able to buy food. Never once did he seem drunk or high so he really did seem to be doing it to get food. I would see other guys like him walking along the street with garbage bags of bottles too, so it appeared to be the thing they did and it seemed to work out for everyone as I spoke to lots of people who said they also had a local homeless person that did the same at their apartments.
  - ratww 5y ago
    When I lived in Brazil there was no reliable municipal recycling in my city, and no bottle deposit, so instead of throwing paper, cans and bottles into the common garbage, we just left it properly separated at the door and a homeless guy with a cart would pick it up weekly and get it recycled. They were pretty much running a public utility service I'd otherwise have to pay for with taxes.
EE84M3i 5y ago
>Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return How does this work for convenience stores or other non-supermarkets that incidentally sell drinks in cans/bottles? They have to have a machine?
- bouvin 5y ago
  At least here in Denmark, they very often do. If they do not, you can just hand the empty to the shopkeeper and they will reimburse you.
- gnopgnip 5y ago
  In MI it is the same, small stores manually do it. You hand them a box with 12 cans in it and they credit you $1.20
  - bell-cot 5y ago
    My experience in MI* is that a fair number of stores can be rather sticky about returns - "we don't sell that brand", "did you buy it here?", "come back when the machine is fixed", etc. Conveniently, I live in a large-enough urban area to just take my business elsewhere. *Michigan, U.S.A.
  - ratww 5y ago
    Michigan's 10 cent rate is part of the plot of the legendary Seinfeld episode "The Bottle Deposit". In this episode Kramer and Newman scheme a plan to deliver bottles from New York (where deposit was only 5c) to Michigan to cash in.
- oaiey 5y ago
  Well, not everyone needs to do a reverse vending machine. Just hand them back to the cashier and he returns you money. Goes that far that when a restaurant sells a full bottle they need to take it back. We have this system also in Germany since the late 80s (I think) and it works very well. Current incentive ranges from 8ct (beer glass bottles ... beer lobby always has exceptions ;)) to 25ct (plastic bottles)
Semaphor 5y ago
Same in Germany, there is also the "Pfand gehört daneben" (Deposit [bottles] belong next [to the trashcan]) campaign, often with bottle holder on the trash can. The whole deposit system is extremely convenient when you are drinking in the park or beach, where you usually don't want to bring all the bottles back again, but you'll get people coming by and ask if you have any deposit bottles to give to them.
- subpixel 5y ago
  Isn’t there a decline in deposit bottle usage in Germany? When I was a kid beer was delivered to your house by the crate and empties picked up. I was led to believe this has become less common, which would be regrettable bc it was elegantly efficient.
  - laulis 5y ago
    There's Flaschenpost[1] in some cities, and afaik it's pretty popular. Me and my partner use it pretty regularly. [1] https://www.flaschenpost.de/ https://www.flaschenpost.de/
    - dark-star 5y ago
      wow, what a badly designed site. I can't even look at it because it keeps pestering me with some popup that asks for my ZIP code (which I don't want to provide, as I just want to know what that page is all about)
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    Deliveries, I don't know. But every sparkling water, beer bottle has deposit as have all (?) cans. So a decline would be kinda impossible unless people stop buying those.
  - ratww 5y ago
    Every other month I see old products going from "disposable" to "with deposit". So I don't think so. The latest for me were the tiny juice bottles from Rewe. 25c Pfand.
bemmu 5y ago
At the large Finnish LAN party / demoscene event Assembly, there are people who go around all the desks collecting the cans and bottles people leave on them. I wonder how much they make doing this, considering there are thousands of desks with everyone consuming energy drinks and soda nonstop.
- mattl 5y ago
  I once paid for most of my trip to a hacker event in Germany by picking up and returning all the discarded bottles of beer and Club Mate. It took maybe two hours.
dahfizz 5y ago
I live in the US, and all grocery stores I have been to have those reverse vending machines. I also never bother to return my bottles and cans, because it's still a waste of my time. I put all bottles and cans in the recycling, along with anything else recyclable (on the backend, almost everything goes to a landfill anyway. But that's not my problem.) Edit: for those asking, I have lived in multiple New England states, and bottle return machines have been common in all of them.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  I've not seen them in the US. Maybe I've seen them on Supermarket Sweep, though https://supermarketsweep.fandom.com/wiki/Recycling_Center https://supermarketsweep.fandom.com/wiki/Recycling_Center :)
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  I'm in the Midwest, USA, never seen such a reverse vending machine...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- umvi 5y ago
  Where in the US? The US is like 50 different mini countries - I've never seen this and I've lived in 6 different states.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  I'm guessing the New England states were Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and/or Connecticut? (not new hampshire or rhode island, which don't have deposit laws). My guess it that these machines are only going to be in states with deposit laws, and it's likely the grocery stores are legally required to take returns (whether by machine or human). There are 10 states with bottle deposit laws (which mostly predate consumer recycling): California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont. I suspect a much higher percentage of material actually gets recycled from bottles returned via deposit law mechanisms, compared to US standard "single stream" residential recycling, which are kind of notorious for their low rate of actual recycling (material taken away from homes actually being recycled) due to contamination and expense of separation.

Aissen 5y ago

Saw that at your neighboor's in Copenhagen, and after the first outrage of paying +50cts per drink, I understood that I was seeing a glimpse the future… If littering is equivalent to throwing money, you simply won't do it. Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though…

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
> Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though… It becomes an alternative form of giving them your change, and you conveniently don't have to carry the bottle home. Although I've lived in a city where an old lady was known to roam the parks and was very pushy about wanting you to surrender your bottles.
oaiey 5y ago
> Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though… It becomes a respectful cooperation. When you party in a park, you place your containers next to a trash so a homeless can pick it up without searching the trash. They basically help you partying hard (and not caring/carrying about the bottles) and earn (by hard work) a bit of money.
- runj__ 5y ago
  I don't know about "respectful" for both parties. Bottle collectors trying to take/steal not yet empty bottles and cans has become more of a rule than an exception in parks in central Stockholm. I'm still very much in favour of container deposit but I'm growing really tired of forceful collecting.
  - lillecarl 5y ago
    The people you're referring to are likely not the same kind of people who collect bottles in other countries. My friend has this jokish ticks screaming out "Min pant"(roughly translates into "my cans) when we're a bit drunk, referring to this exact problem. It's inappropriate to go into further detail than to say he's not making fun of any Swedes. It's one of the downsides of free movement within the EU when you're a country that's built on assuming most people will do right for themselves, the it breaks.
    - _0ffh 5y ago
      >"Min pant"(roughly translates into "my cans) Sounds more like "my deposit" to me.
      - lillecarl 5y ago
        Sure, I find it easier to translate English to Swedish than the other way around I guess. Though they are referring to your soon to be recycled cans and bottles when semi-agressively trying to steal them from you.
        Symbiote 5y ago
        It would be "my pawn", translated more literally. Some people find this amusing.
      - freeflight 5y ago
        Sounds like "Mein Pfand" to me.
me_me_me 5y ago
> If littering is equivalent to throwing money, you simply won't do it. I have learnt that when organising events at work (sponsored by workplace), you have to charge people. Any amount like €5, its two cups of coffee but turn-up rate is in high 90% of people that paid upfront. Without charging any money its 50-60% The number of people that sign up were pretty similar, so I hazard a guess that risk aversion was at play. Its a powerful tool even if you know about it.
ratww 5y ago
> Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though… That's kind of convenient actually IMO. I get rid of the bottle, I don't have to give them cash. Win-win.
cafard 5y ago
Some years ago, New York passed a law on recycling. For some reason, people seemed to be surprised when it turned out that those showing up at the grocery store with carts full of recyclables were neither lawyers nor stock traders, but rather the homeless.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  in California there are fewer dropoffs in stores but the bottles tend to come from residential recycling bins, which were raided while they were waiting for a truck to pick them up.
  - QuarterReptile 5y ago
    In my experience, that's common, but so is people jumping your fence to raid your cans before you've put them out. And, should you ever try to recoup the 'deposit' by going to the recycling center, you'll spend 1+ hour in line being hounded by homeless people to give them your cans. All of it creates way more incentive to just throw your cans in the trash so you don't have to deal with any of that.
    - mrexroad 5y ago
      Bay Area here. My experience at recycling centers has always been quick and painless. Took over 60 lbs of cans and a bunch of scrap copper the other week. No line, no hounding.
      - QuarterReptile 5y ago
        My experiences in Monterey (2015) and San Diego (2019) were negative. It is good to hear that the particular issue either is not universal or has improved with time.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    It's still a positive, at least if the recycling system works similar to in the EU. Here, food containers have fairly strict limits on what recycled waste can be used to make them. Returned bottles and cans are clean enough to be made into new food packaging, but ordinary household recycling waste is not.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
Not in Norway, not enough homeless people and far too few discarded bottles and cans. I pick up the occasional beer can on the beach near where I live but they are almost always Polish and of course have no deposit.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
I am not a rich man but the homeless guy needs the 50 cents more than I do. And I rather have homeless people collect cans than making street music to be honest...
- ratww 5y ago
  I always assumed street musicians and homeless people were different people
- necovek 5y ago
  While I don't see a connection between homeless people and street musicians, I am intrigued by your complaint of the street musicians? My kids are fascinated by them, and as long as they are not taking up too much space to make it impossible to pass through the street (and if they do, I'll happily pass through their "stage"), I am quite happy to have the streets livened up by some music too. Not all of it is good or to my taste, but it certainly beats empty streets, especially so during cold winter months.
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    They block the shopping streets and their music is terrible. There are no empty streets in the Netherlands on a Saturday and there is nothing more depressing than a Eastern European on an accordion.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      Perhaps the better Eastern European accordion players stay home. I used to visit Krakow often on business and really enjoyed listening to musicians playing in the main square. Also it wasn't just accordion players, there were all sorts, amateurs, music students, professional musicians playing a wide variety of instruments and styles. It was worth having some cash to put in the bucket.
    - necovek 5y ago
      Isn't it the people that gather around them to listen that block the streets? That's usually my experience.
swlp21 5y ago
> homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection I lived in Alberta 10 years ago and this was totally a thing. One homeless guy hung around the apartment and if you were carrying drink containers he would come and say "Can I take them to the store for you?". Of course, he meant could he get the deposit money on them too. He would hang around until he could fill two or three large garbage bags then head off to the return center to collect the deposit money. In all the time I lived there, I never found out where the actual return center was as I never needed to. The few $ involved was no loss to me (or anyone else in the apartment) but went towards the homeless guy being able to buy food. Never once did he seem drunk or high so he really did seem to be doing it to get food. I would see other guys like him walking along the street with garbage bags of bottles too, so it appeared to be the thing they did and it seemed to work out for everyone as I spoke to lots of people who said they also had a local homeless person that did the same at their apartments.
- ratww 5y ago
  When I lived in Brazil there was no reliable municipal recycling in my city, and no bottle deposit, so instead of throwing paper, cans and bottles into the common garbage, we just left it properly separated at the door and a homeless guy with a cart would pick it up weekly and get it recycled. They were pretty much running a public utility service I'd otherwise have to pay for with taxes.

EE84M3i 5y ago

>Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return How does this work for convenience stores or other non-supermarkets that incidentally sell drinks in cans/bottles? They have to have a machine?

bouvin 5y ago
At least here in Denmark, they very often do. If they do not, you can just hand the empty to the shopkeeper and they will reimburse you.
gnopgnip 5y ago
In MI it is the same, small stores manually do it. You hand them a box with 12 cans in it and they credit you $1.20
- bell-cot 5y ago
  My experience in MI* is that a fair number of stores can be rather sticky about returns - "we don't sell that brand", "did you buy it here?", "come back when the machine is fixed", etc. Conveniently, I live in a large-enough urban area to just take my business elsewhere. *Michigan, U.S.A.
- ratww 5y ago
  Michigan's 10 cent rate is part of the plot of the legendary Seinfeld episode "The Bottle Deposit". In this episode Kramer and Newman scheme a plan to deliver bottles from New York (where deposit was only 5c) to Michigan to cash in.
oaiey 5y ago
Well, not everyone needs to do a reverse vending machine. Just hand them back to the cashier and he returns you money. Goes that far that when a restaurant sells a full bottle they need to take it back. We have this system also in Germany since the late 80s (I think) and it works very well. Current incentive ranges from 8ct (beer glass bottles ... beer lobby always has exceptions ;)) to 25ct (plastic bottles)

Semaphor 5y ago

Same in Germany, there is also the "Pfand gehört daneben" (Deposit [bottles] belong next [to the trashcan]) campaign, often with bottle holder on the trash can. The whole deposit system is extremely convenient when you are drinking in the park or beach, where you usually don't want to bring all the bottles back again, but you'll get people coming by and ask if you have any deposit bottles to give to them.

subpixel 5y ago
Isn’t there a decline in deposit bottle usage in Germany? When I was a kid beer was delivered to your house by the crate and empties picked up. I was led to believe this has become less common, which would be regrettable bc it was elegantly efficient.
- laulis 5y ago
  There's Flaschenpost[1] in some cities, and afaik it's pretty popular. Me and my partner use it pretty regularly. [1] https://www.flaschenpost.de/ https://www.flaschenpost.de/
  - dark-star 5y ago
    wow, what a badly designed site. I can't even look at it because it keeps pestering me with some popup that asks for my ZIP code (which I don't want to provide, as I just want to know what that page is all about)
- Semaphor 5y ago
  Deliveries, I don't know. But every sparkling water, beer bottle has deposit as have all (?) cans. So a decline would be kinda impossible unless people stop buying those.
- ratww 5y ago
  Every other month I see old products going from "disposable" to "with deposit". So I don't think so. The latest for me were the tiny juice bottles from Rewe. 25c Pfand.

bemmu 5y ago

At the large Finnish LAN party / demoscene event Assembly, there are people who go around all the desks collecting the cans and bottles people leave on them. I wonder how much they make doing this, considering there are thousands of desks with everyone consuming energy drinks and soda nonstop.

mattl 5y ago
I once paid for most of my trip to a hacker event in Germany by picking up and returning all the discarded bottles of beer and Club Mate. It took maybe two hours.

dahfizz 5y ago

I live in the US, and all grocery stores I have been to have those reverse vending machines. I also never bother to return my bottles and cans, because it's still a waste of my time. I put all bottles and cans in the recycling, along with anything else recyclable (on the backend, almost everything goes to a landfill anyway. But that's not my problem.) Edit: for those asking, I have lived in multiple New England states, and bottle return machines have been common in all of them.

dfxm12 5y ago
I've not seen them in the US. Maybe I've seen them on Supermarket Sweep, though https://supermarketsweep.fandom.com/wiki/Recycling_Center https://supermarketsweep.fandom.com/wiki/Recycling_Center :)
geerlingguy 5y ago
I'm in the Midwest, USA, never seen such a reverse vending machine...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
umvi 5y ago
Where in the US? The US is like 50 different mini countries - I've never seen this and I've lived in 6 different states.
jrochkind1 5y ago
I'm guessing the New England states were Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and/or Connecticut? (not new hampshire or rhode island, which don't have deposit laws). My guess it that these machines are only going to be in states with deposit laws, and it's likely the grocery stores are legally required to take returns (whether by machine or human). There are 10 states with bottle deposit laws (which mostly predate consumer recycling): California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont. I suspect a much higher percentage of material actually gets recycled from bottles returned via deposit law mechanisms, compared to US standard "single stream" residential recycling, which are kind of notorious for their low rate of actual recycling (material taken away from homes actually being recycled) due to contamination and expense of separation.