5 ms·

Some dairies do that, by including a $1 deposit on bottles. At $1, it's actually worth your while to collect and return the bottles to the store where you got t

by lambda 13y ago

Some dairies do that, by including a $1 deposit on bottles. At $1, it's actually worth your while to collect and return the bottles to the store where you got them (likely when you go shopping for your next bottle of milk).

thrownaway2424 13y ago
In my town you can arbitrage them by buying quarts of yogurt at the farmers' market where the deposit is $1.25, and returning the bottles to the grocery store, that carries the same brand of yogurt in the same bottles, where they pay $1.50 for returns.
- ars 13y ago
  Reminds me how food stamps can be used to buy soda. Some people who had more than they needed would buy soda, pour it out, and return the bottle just for the deposit. They fixed that by making the deposit not payable by the food stamp.
vidarh 13y ago
Norway has a bottle tax ranging from 0.5 to 2.5 NOK I think (been a while since I lived in Norway; 2.5NOK is roughly 43 cents), and a recycling rate for glass bottles of something like 99%. The key, in addition to the bottle tax, is automated bottle collection machines in pretty much all grocery stores that'll issue receipts to be used to offset against purchases at the till. It's so convenient most people return them, and the bottle tax ensures most of those that gets thrown away gets picked up by kids or poorer people for the money. Most undamaged glass bottles would be returned to bottlers by volume rather than origin, for washing and reuse, apart from Coke bottles for obvious reasons. Though these days most of the bottles are still plastic, but are still largely recycled - even if the energy savings isn't all that huge, it still saves a lot of landfill space.
- LeonidasXIV 13y ago
  In Germany shopw have to charge you 25 eurocent when you buy a plastic bottle which they will return when you bring the bottle back. No such thing exists for glass bottles but they do get recycled. There are even separate recycle bins for white, brown and green glass. Yes, germans take trash separation seriously (on a related note, people in Japan too).
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    I think you’re missing the point. It’s ‘reusing’ versus ’recycling’. When you throw bottles in a recycling bin, you can’t reuse them because they’re broken. It then takes a lot of energy to turn them into new bottles. It’s a lot better to keep the bottles intact, clean them, and fill them again. That’s what a few countries have chosen to do. The way it’s done in Germany is unfortunately a lot more common.
    - LeonidasXIV 13y ago
      Actually, Germany does both. The 25ct thing is a more recent development.
  - rmk2 13y ago
    These things certainly do exist. Everything that you buy per crate is usually returned as a a crate with empty bottles again. Case in point: beer bottles. Depending on brewery and type of bottle, I used to get beer that had the name of another beer printed on the (non-removable) snap-lock cap[1]. The same goes for a variety of other glass bottles. They are simply washed out (usually chemically), refilled, a new printed label is put on, a cap put on, done. [1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCgelverschluss https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCgelverschluss
    - LeonidasXIV 13y ago
      You're right, I have no idea how I forgot about this. Shame on me.
  - iSnow 13y ago
- mjn 13y ago
  Denmark has these machines also, but I believe the vast majority of the bottles are now crushed anyway, rather than reused. The traditional standard bottles, mostly nowadays used by lower-end beer and soda manufacturers, are reused (you can tell by the scuffing around the middle of the bottle on reused bottles). They're made of thicker glass and are in a standardized shape. But most beer comes in bottles with thinner glass and unstandardized shape. I believe that started due to the EU ruling that Denmark's requirement for standardized bottles was de-facto a trade barrier, since it made it difficult for non-Danish beer manufacturers to export to the Danish market.
- arnoooooo 13y ago
  I knew this was working in Norway when the morning after some festival I saw young people use a small boat to gather all the bottles and cans in the nearby lake :)

by lambda 13y ago

thrownaway2424 13y ago

In my town you can arbitrage them by buying quarts of yogurt at the farmers' market where the deposit is $1.25, and returning the bottles to the grocery store, that carries the same brand of yogurt in the same bottles, where they pay $1.50 for returns.

ars 13y ago
Reminds me how food stamps can be used to buy soda. Some people who had more than they needed would buy soda, pour it out, and return the bottle just for the deposit. They fixed that by making the deposit not payable by the food stamp.

vidarh 13y ago

Norway has a bottle tax ranging from 0.5 to 2.5 NOK I think (been a while since I lived in Norway; 2.5NOK is roughly 43 cents), and a recycling rate for glass bottles of something like 99%. The key, in addition to the bottle tax, is automated bottle collection machines in pretty much all grocery stores that'll issue receipts to be used to offset against purchases at the till. It's so convenient most people return them, and the bottle tax ensures most of those that gets thrown away gets picked up by kids or poorer people for the money. Most undamaged glass bottles would be returned to bottlers by volume rather than origin, for washing and reuse, apart from Coke bottles for obvious reasons. Though these days most of the bottles are still plastic, but are still largely recycled - even if the energy savings isn't all that huge, it still saves a lot of landfill space.

LeonidasXIV 13y ago
In Germany shopw have to charge you 25 eurocent when you buy a plastic bottle which they will return when you bring the bottle back. No such thing exists for glass bottles but they do get recycled. There are even separate recycle bins for white, brown and green glass. Yes, germans take trash separation seriously (on a related note, people in Japan too).
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  I think you’re missing the point. It’s ‘reusing’ versus ’recycling’. When you throw bottles in a recycling bin, you can’t reuse them because they’re broken. It then takes a lot of energy to turn them into new bottles. It’s a lot better to keep the bottles intact, clean them, and fill them again. That’s what a few countries have chosen to do. The way it’s done in Germany is unfortunately a lot more common.
  - LeonidasXIV 13y ago
    Actually, Germany does both. The 25ct thing is a more recent development.
- rmk2 13y ago
  These things certainly do exist. Everything that you buy per crate is usually returned as a a crate with empty bottles again. Case in point: beer bottles. Depending on brewery and type of bottle, I used to get beer that had the name of another beer printed on the (non-removable) snap-lock cap[1]. The same goes for a variety of other glass bottles. They are simply washed out (usually chemically), refilled, a new printed label is put on, a cap put on, done. [1]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCgelverschluss https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCgelverschluss
  - LeonidasXIV 13y ago
    You're right, I have no idea how I forgot about this. Shame on me.
- iSnow 13y ago
mjn 13y ago
Denmark has these machines also, but I believe the vast majority of the bottles are now crushed anyway, rather than reused. The traditional standard bottles, mostly nowadays used by lower-end beer and soda manufacturers, are reused (you can tell by the scuffing around the middle of the bottle on reused bottles). They're made of thicker glass and are in a standardized shape. But most beer comes in bottles with thinner glass and unstandardized shape. I believe that started due to the EU ruling that Denmark's requirement for standardized bottles was de-facto a trade barrier, since it made it difficult for non-Danish beer manufacturers to export to the Danish market.
arnoooooo 13y ago
I knew this was working in Norway when the morning after some festival I saw young people use a small boat to gather all the bottles and cans in the nearby lake :)