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Comment by fyfy18 | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone know why more countries haven’t taken a stance like Germany with glass bottles? For those who aren’t aware, in Germany there are standard glass bottle shapes that are used for beer and soft drinks. Instead of being recycled, the bottle is cleaned, refilled and relabelled - most likely by a different producer. The bottles can be reused up to 50 times.

A lot of countries have the infrastructure of refunding a deposit when a bottle is returned, but it sounds like most of those are just going to end up in a landfill.

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The United States used to have this for soft drinks. I remember taking my father's empty Dr. Pepper bottles back to the supermarket for gas money as a teenager. The rebate (just a refund of what you paid for it when you bought it) was about $1 per eight-pack of bottles... this was around 1990 or so. I remember how heavy and sturdy these re-usable bottles were.

This was phased out sometime in the 1990s. I guess it was just too costly for the bottlers.

Same in France where when I was young (late 70’s until mid 80’s) you could return your glass bottles and exchange for money.

But then PET bottles start to rise and the returnable policies eventually disappeared in most country.

Here in Sweden at least you can return PET bottles for money (about 0.10-0.20€).

Same in Quebec. I believe other provinces in Canada have similar policies.

$ 0.05 on all non-refillable single-fill containers that are 450 ml or less in size

$ 0.10 on all single-fill and glass containers up to 450 ml size

$ 0.20 on all single-fill containers larger than 450 ml

$ 0.05 for each soft drink container sold

The bottles in current PET refund programs in Sweden are recycled as raw plastic. The old 1.5L (4 SEK, ~€0.50 refund) PET bottles that existed in the 90s were refilled, though.

I think at least part of it are laws around rivers/lakes/beaches about glass. I can understand why we wouldn't want people to have glass these places. So perhaps instead of having 2 different production lines with more expensive glass and cheaper plastic they just use the cheaper plastic.

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