German plastics group highlights success of bottle deposits in recycling | Hacker News Reader

German plastics group highlights success of bottle deposits in recycling

plasticsnews.com

68 pointsendswapper41 comments

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_bi...

http://refillables.grrn.org/content/western-europes-experien...

http://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/10497-the-mystery-...

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.

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.

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.

[in old man's voice]

I swear Augustiner tasted so much better when you could only get it in Bavaria.

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.

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.p... [EN: p25ff]

I suspect plastic is better in the small number of countries where plastic is recycled and doesn't wind up at sea.

The bottle deposit is called "pfand" here you can see a machine in operation in a supermarket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLKmr0uVhWo

Some more details on the program: 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.

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.

It's one of the most successful top->down redistribution projects.

And at the same time there's no tax question and the rate of fraud has been very low.

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.

Actually it is not just the homeless guys who pick up the bottles. I've seen all sort of people picking up the empty bottles here.

One of my flatmates did it for a while to pad his unemployment money. It's probably not that normal to do, but anywhere else I've lived this would be unthinkable.

You can make a lot of money with it if you do it in areas where the homeless rate is low. Especially in the first years when it wasn't that common, I knew someone who made more than 40€ per hour with a good strategy of where to go. Best thing about it is that it's tax free and legal.

I see more rubbish in parks in Copenhagen, with a deposit sysetm, than I used to in London, where there is no deposit system.

Homeless people pick up the beer bottles, and cola cans, but they won't collect the wine bottles, or the packaging from the snacks, but Danes seem to leave this in the park with the bottles.

It's nice that the streets are clean, but maybe we'd be doing better if we just gave those people cleaning jobs that they can do plus some support with staying in the job, and accommodation, and medical help if needed.

Sure, but that's not trivial. E.g. in many cases these are people who might be unable/unwilling to work any kind of regular or fixed hours, so making this a regular-employment job would hurt those people.

Adding to that, a lot of homeless people have to dumpster dive to get out those returnable bottles, which obviously is pretty humiliating. So some guys first developed stickers saying "Bottles belong next to the trashbin" and put them on a lot of trashbins - later, another group invented the "Pfandring" or deposit ring which is attached to a trashbin and asks you to put your bottle in the ring, not the trashbin.

I find it fascinating how small regulatory practices can have enormous social effects.

[1]https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmobil.ksta....

I still feel the strong urge to leave bottles next to the trash can even though I don't live in Germany anymore. It's one of those weird 'customs' I picked up.

Others customs include:

- Opening all my windows at least once a day and leaving them open until it's freezing inside. - Feeling anything but 'meh' about asparagus. - making sure I have cash when leaving the house (although that may be Berlin-specific) - buying the bitter 'fizzy water'. - using my plastic shopping bags as trash bags

When I lived in Boston in the 1990s, homeless people would tear open the trash bags in the hope of finding drink containers that could be returned for credit. As a result rubbish was scattered everywhere.

That's great.

In New York, we have $0.05 deposits, and which are less effective than the high deposits in Europe but dramatically increase the recycling rate. The biggest gap is that many bottles (wine & liquor, juice, milk, etc) are exempt, and the diversion rates are much lower.

I wish they did the same thing for plastic bags. Bottle litter is pretty limited these days, but I live on a side street off of an avenue, and we get a lot of blown in bags from that street. The bags clog storm drains, get caught in trees, etc.

In Michigan we have had $0.10 deposit on beer bottles and pop(soda) bottles for a long time. It appears to extremely successful. You never see bottles littered anywhere, they are always picked up by someone in need. Gas station garbage can a frequently sorted through for returnables. School programs like band and sports teams will have bottle drives where they send the kids around through the neighborhood and collect bottles. It is a very successful fundraising method for them.

Growing up in Indiana, it was hard not to notice the contrast in side ditch cleanliness when crossing the state line. Part of it is cultural, too, as the ditches in WA are a lot cleaner than in my Indiana childhood, and WA doesn't have any bottle laws.

In The Netherlands plastic bags can no longer be given away for free since the beginning of this year (some messy foodstuffs are excepted; e.g., the fishmonger). Shops are free to decide what to charge (mostly €0,10 to €0,25) but the overall effect is that people are (again) getting in the habit of bringing their own reusable bags along.

I've not seen any numbers, but anecdotally it's been very effective. Most people I know, including myself, take care to reuse bags more than before.

Same in Germany. Some big chains have even phased out plastic bags entirely and only offer paper bags for 0,50€.

Another great factor is that the kid would collect the bottles around the house and run downstairs to the EDEKA to put them into the machine. And he nagged us not to but bottles without the Pfand sticker.

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.

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...

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/

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

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.

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.

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...

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.“

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)

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“.

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.

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.

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