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.
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…
> 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.
In Germany -at least the cities I'm familiar with- everyone places their cans and bottles next to the trash-can.
German bottles often have "pfand gehört daneben" (Deposits belong next to it) printed on them[0]. And some cities even placed special holders alongside the trashcans[1].
Like with many things, Germans have made deposit collection into an efficient job.
The only issue is that glass bottles are too cheap and heavy.
They should at least have a 25 cent deposit as well. Right now no homeless person picks those up, because it's just not worth it.
Even with 25 cents there would still be a disincentive due to the weight, but I also don't want to incentivize bottle makers to produce more plastic, for them to lower the price at the counter.
Single-use containers are 25 cents, indeed, but a lot of the stuff you will buy is multi-use, and there things vary. Multi-use plastic bottles and large glass bottles usually have a 15 cents deposit, and small beer glass bottles it is only 8 cents, unless they have a clip-lock (Flensburger e.g.) then it's 15 cents again. Vine bottles are extremely confusing, ranging from no deposit, to 2 or 3 cents, to 15 cents.
I saw a lot of bottle collector people skip glass bottles, in particular beer bottles. I live close to a minor league football (soccer) stadium that also hosts the local American Football team and various other events, and bottle collectors are a constant sight before, during and after the games and events. The two closest city tram stops are quite often still littered all over with multi-use beer bottles even days after, because bottle collectors do not like those things. Too heavy and bulky at only 8 cents. People "litter" deliberately, being told the bottle collector people will be happy and thankful for the easy collection...
If I remember correctly, this difference in deposit amount was justified by reasoning lower multi-use deposits compared to single-use deposits would drive the adoption of multi-use. I don't think it has done that much, not really. When single-use deposits became a thing, a lot of single-use containers vanished completely, but once the collection systems got established a lot of it just returned.
I personally would outlaw most types of single-use containers, especially for "cold" beverages, and actually make the deposits all the same amount. That would have a far better and greater impact than bickering about outlawing plastic straws, at the very least. And a glass beer bottle might be worth picking up if it's 25 cents you get for it instead of 8.
> Single-use containers are 25 cents, indeed, but a lot of the stuff you will buy is multi-use, and there things vary. Multi-use plastic bottles and large glass bottles usually have a 15 cents deposit, and small beer glass bottles it is only 8 cents, unless they have a clip-lock (Flensburger e.g.) then it's 15 cents again. Vine bottles are extremely confusing, ranging from no deposit, to 2 or 3 cents, to 15 cents.
To add to all of that confusion; Some brands of yogurt in glass jars also have a deposit on them, while most other yogurt glasses don't.
Right, indeed. Glass jars (usually) have a deposit when they are "multi-use", while single-use plastic containers (and some single-use glass ones) do not. I lost many euros thanks to that, because I didn't know for a long time, and dumped my yogurt glass jars into the normal glass collection containers. It would have been easy to collect the deposits, since I am doing that for all the bottles I use anyway. :P
Glass bottles are 8 cents, if they are re-use.
Re-use glass bottles with a clip closure are 15 cent (and there are still some other kind of bottles with 15 cent).
If they are only single use, they are 25 cents (e.g. beer from Lidl).
> Most glass is mostly sand, an abundant raw material.
Sand is not actually an abundant raw material [0]. Although sand in general is abundant, sand that is usable for construction and manufacturing is generally found on beaches and flood-plains - desert sand is less angular and usable. We extract 50 billion tonnes of sand per year and this is getting worse as a result of continued massive urbanisation. Ocean dredging for sand has significant ecological input.
This might not be why glass recycling started, but it suggests an incentive for continuing to do so.
Garbage collectors don't want to handle glass when it's mixed in with the other waste. So it is already collected separately. Might as well recycle it.
Yeah, most people are considerate enough to either take their bottles with them or put them somewhere where they can be collected easily, as you wrote. And, even if beer bottles only have 8 cents deposit, are heavy, stinky and the remaining beer may run out, they do get collected sometimes. But, to avoid the impression that in Germany everything works perfectly, I should also mention the (maybe fewer) others, who don't care about the 8 cents and simply smash the bottles on the sidewalk for "fun". As a cyclist, I have a special love for this second category...
Yeh until the machines reject your four crates of beer for no reason and you’re in that limbo of “do I care about €10 enough to lug these to another edeka or not” ;)
I remember asking a German friend why people were leaving the bottles on top of the bins when we went to a football match.
Growing up in Scotland collecting Irn Bru bottles was something you could do for "sweetie" money. I was disappointed the last time I looked to find out that they have now decommissioned their bottle cleaning plant. Apparently conventional recycling has resulted in the rate of return being too low.
They are planning to bring it back in Scotland, as a more univeral scheme like the GP descirbes in Norway. The timeline keeps getting pushed back due to lobbying from the drinks industry though: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/14/scotland-del...
It can become a disrespectful cooperation as well.
I’ve had people rummage through recycling bin for cans and leaving a mess, I’ve seen fights over who gets to collect cans, and I’ve seen trespassing to collect cans from people’s private porches.
When collecting cans goes from a lucrative hobby to a business, problems arise.
i have seen some trash cans in Oslo with a separate cylinder for bottles that gives easy access to the bottles. I hope this becomes more popular, so that they don't have to dig through the trash cans.
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.
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.
I see such behavior here in Germany sometimes, too. Like everywhere else in life, there are nice bottle collectors, and there are assholes.
One collector gave me a sticky, wet butt, because he snuck up behind us in a park, "stole" my half empty beer bottle I placed next to me, and then proceeded to empty it out right there. It was one of the very few times I had trouble controlling myself not to hit somebody... I managed to control myself in the end enough to avoid violence, but was still angry enough to call the cops on the guy. Cops told him to not show up in the park or surrounding parks for the rest of the day, and when they asked if I wanted to press charges (technically it was theft and damage of property), the collector waved a 20 Euro note for "cleaning costs", which I took instead. I felt that was punishment enough.
Then again, there is plenty of bottle collectors who are rather polite, and humbly ask if you're done with the bottle and if they can have it. And a lot of people also gather together their empty bottles in a pile when they see a collector approaching.
I'm quite disappointed you didn't press charges to he honest, (s)he must've understood perfectly what (s)he was doing and the consequences, yet he still did it. And you're likely not the only person abused like that.
Yes there are loads of nice appreciative collectors and they are doing us a service, it's just sad when the predators come and ruin it.
My hope was that involving the cops was scary enough (they took down the details of that person, and issued a formal order to vacate), and that the immediate monetary "punishment" in form of those 20 bucks (which is a lot of bottles) helped too. I felt it was a reasonable severe response to what happened. Causing that guy a lot of legal trouble, aside from clogging up the legal system with not even 20 bucks worth of damages, seemed unreasonable.
Those cops are also regularly working that area (they in fact were already in the park when I called, and I had seen them before doing their rounds), and if that bottle collector violated their order to vacate, it would have had actual consequences. And if he pulls the same shit again, the cops will have a "you again moment", and probably mention that to the next person who makes a complaint and at the very least issue a much longer order to vacate. And since they didn't mention anything to me, I am assuming it was the first time the cops were called on that guy, and we Germans have a tendency to call the cops quite often ;)
It also saved me from a lot of hassle myself, of course, not having to go to the police to give a signed statement, maybe show up in court, etc.
All these deposits are so low. Germany has 25 cent on non-beer plastic bottles.
Which means when buying a 1,5 liters bottle of water, the bottle is worth more (25 cent) than the water in it (19 cent).
Bottle collectors are quite common, haven't met any rude ones myself, but they are even speed-collecting trough the trash cans of trains stopped making stops at the station.
The prices are in Danish crowns, and aren't that far away from the German ones, although some consideration should be made for the higher cost of living here.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Btw, here in Serbia (what you'd probably call Eastern Europe :), accordions are pretty rare (I guess they all went to Netherlands :)) other than in gypsy bands (but they rarely play in the streets other than when following weddings around), but violins (usually students), keyboards and guitars (number one, duh) are most common, but you get to hear a trumpet or a flute too. We are just classy like that (or there might be a musical school or two nearby in the part of Belgrade I see them in ;).
Eastern European music schools , and particular those with folklore specialties, have had a long history of master classes. It is often that one can find street talent with proper education, just because music industry pays very little in Eastern Europe.
It seems to me that in Western Europe you find mostly dégénérâtes and hippies with no formal music education at all.
One can know the difference
only if he has lived in Eastern Europe.
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.
The machine is completely optional and just there to save time if they get a lot of deposits. They can handle it manually if they want to.
There is a limit to how large the deposit can be for stores without a machine. If you come with a big trash bag with bottles/cans, they have the right to refuse and refer you to a place with a machine (most grocery stores have machines)
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)
The lightweight plastic ones are "Einweg" ("single use"), and the deposit is to get the material back for recycling - as long as the deposit label will scan, it's accepted. It's easier to scan them in the automats if they're not crushed; my German husband does not seem to have fully internalized this, so I reinflate them when they get rejected.
Glass bottles (beer, juice, milk and yoghurt) are "Mehrweg" ("multi-use"), and they actually want a bottle to sterilize and reuse (preferably with metal lid in the case of the milk and joghurt bottles), so if it's broken, it's technically trash and should go in the Altglas (old glass) containers you see at least once in every city neighborhood.
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.
At least where I am in Norway, there are far more grocery stores, but they're all smaller. So there are, relative to the US, fewer pure "convenience" stores, and more small groceries. Not sure if this holds true everywhere, but thought it added some context to your question.
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.
Too many stores refuse to take bottle types that they don't sell though. I am often left with one or two bottles that technically should be eligible, but I have to take them back with me. The Norwegian way seems more convenient for consumers.
I think from a certain size on, they have to take them back. I understand smaller stores not wanting/having to bother. But maybe I'm wrong, after all I almost exclusively buy from REWE, so it's never something I encounter personally.
I encounter this mostly when buying craft beer from a specialized store. These import bottles have Pfand too, but you can't return them to any machine. Have to remember which ones go back to the craft beer shop. Which is kinda obvious though, so I'm not complaining.
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.
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.
Edit: it's reusable/refillable bottles that I am remembering and referring to, and I'm happy to say the system in Germany seems to be strong, per Google.
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)
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.
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.
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.
In many places while they may be required, their position is relegated to the back or hidden side of the building. I imagine this is because most shoppers do not return their bottles and cans… while some consider those who endeavor to do so “unsightly” or a “traffic hazard.”
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.
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.
The cost of food is suppressed, because our elites, leaders and politicians know what happens when that too is subjected to inflation as well, and that is revolution. Meanwhile, as far as I can see, the frog-boiling of regular people has been steady at least since the 60's. Back then the cost of a nice apartment was about one or two years pay. Today it's easily 10 years pay, and so the former middle class opt out of having children because all value property is too high for them to afford. Meanwhile the only promise our elites are willing to give us, is that we'll own nothing and be happy. Well, we'll see about that. Because what's happening now is that they are now unable to keep inflation from also seeping into everyday products. Gas and power is already buckling here in Europe, and I suspect food prices will be next. Unless they can control it, then social unrest is sure to follow.
Don't forget the wonderful American invention of the "gig economy".
Minimum wage, healthcare, job security? No we must destroy everything our ancestors fought for.
Here in california the fee per bottle and can goes to state as taxes. You can get it back by turning in bottles and cans at a recycling center but the California state had made it impossible to return these cans for money. They have systematically shut down automated recycling redemption machines, caused long lines at in person centers and so on.
> They have systematically shut down automated recycling redemption machines
I remember these machines outside of every grocery store, and now I don't see them anywhere anymore. It never occurred to me it was a purposeful effort, but then again I never gave it much thought.
> Because people hate for the homeless and want to punish them, for some reason
It's more, I think, that people hate seeing the homeless, and want to keep them away. They don't particularly care enough to hate them, they just don't want to have to encounter them.
I think Oregon has the right idea. We did invent the bottle bill, so I guess that isn't a complete surprise. The redemption value is tied not to inflation, but to redemption rate. If it drops low enough, the deposit is increased. We started at 5 cents, and in 2015 the redemption rate had slipped down to 65%, so the deposit was doubled to 10 cents.
Ok so we raise money to rent giant warehouses, hit the streets and buy up all the bottles for 10 cents, and then just warehouse them. Redemption rate slips, deposit increases -> profit.
Are you kidding? You'd have to be insane to agree with that. Some people are already independently wealthy. Some people -- a really large number of people -- are supported by other people.
If the value of having the cans collected is less than the cost of having someone collect them, then it turns out the cans don't need to be collected after all.
In Germany, at least last time i was there, a plastic bottle got you a full Euro back as a deposit. Aluminum a little less but still good. The result was you basically never saw a plastic bottle on the ground outside of tourist areas where people didn't know about the Pfand. And even there, the bottle doesn't stay on the ground for long because that's a whole euro there on the ground. Nobody throws away a whole euro, and just about every one will bend down to pick one up.
> This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage
It's not just inflation you have to keep up with but also falling material costs as aluminum is more mass produced, etc.
Where does the money come from for the refunds? Without government subsidies I don't think it would make economic sense for a recycling center to pay $.50 or even $.25 per can if the amount of aluminum scrap is only worth $.10
Typically these function as deposit programs: e.g. $0.10 per can is levied at retail purchase, to be hypothetically returned when the can is turned in for recycling, effectively creating bounties for the pickup and recycle of cans discarded rather than recycled.
Ah, so GP is essentially proposing raising prices on canned and bottled goods then to allow collectors to have living wage. That is a tricky needle to thread though because raise refund prices too much and fewer people will litter because it's like throwing money on the ground.
Precisely what we need is to make the deposit prices so high that the homeless will fight over them. Then we can record them and upload the videos to liveleak.
Where I live we have curbside recycling and people are paid a living wage to come by in a truck and pick it up. However, the folks 'collecting" these cans are actually taking them out of the bins during the night / morning before pickup.
The cost of drinks largely hasn't increased in line with inflation, so you'd very quickly arrive at an unsustainable situation where returning a can/bottle would give you more money than it cost you to buy it.
It can never give you more than it cost — the redemption value gets added to the cost of the beverage. So a $1 bottle of Coke would cost $1.05 if the redemption value were 5¢ And it would cost $1.50 if the redemption value were 50¢.
The reason the redemption value has not gone up much is that people would balk at paying so much for the goods upfront, IMO. Adding 20¢ per can would add nearly $5 to the cost of a 24-pack or soda. The cost per ounce of soda drops dramatically when you buy in volume, so the redemption value would grow to be a substantial portion of the total cost for larger purchases.
You're right that they won't give up drinking soda! But the experience of Philadelphia, [1] which imposed a per-ounce soda tax (later repealed) shows us that these tend to drive consumers to other jurisdictions (NJ) to buy groceries. This means Philadelphia lost out not only on soda sales, but also on other groceries purchased at the same time.
Another issue that arises is that people will actually transport recyclables across state lines to arbitrage the differences in redemption value. [2] This only happens if there are large enough disparities, but in the US this is almost certain to happen due to the different policy choices made by nearby states.
The thing I don't get about US though......people keep pointing out that US States are as big if not bigger than most European countries - and over there companies somehow manage to create completely unique packaging for every country, distribute their product and keep stock of what's where. Why not in the US? If this sort of thing is enough of an issue, why not make sure that each state gets different barcode, or slightly different label or whatever, to make sure the bottles are not returnable between state lines?
Germany pays a lot more for cans and bottles than Poland does, but you can't return Polish bottles and cans in German stores because the barcodes and labels are different - you can cross the border without any issue, but there is no way to exploit the economic imbalance in recyclables returns.
While I see your point about how to solve this problem, why is this even a problem "worth" solving? Going back to the nuts and bolts: are the bottles and cans any different between countries? What is exactly protected from accepting "foreign" recyclable materials? In a free market, if people start dropping over the border to recycle, local price would quickly match up to avoid people having to make the trip (somebody would make a business out of it, and then original deposit price would soon match up with where it's more expensive).
It rather seems to be the other way around: it's easier to devise a system where you go by something unique and country-specific like a bar-code (to avoid counterfeiting business), so that's why it's like that (of course, there's also living standard difference between countries).
Still, even if there was an incentive discrepancy, it's easy for all the countries to match upward since this is basically just "loaning" bottles/cans out, and you only need to pay out "once" for your regular supply of whatever drinks you like to get, and after that, you are just re-starting the "loan".
FWIW, it's been like that in Serbia since forever, but only for the same product where the producer cared (you'd get an entire beer case, and then once you are through it, you bring it back to the store, and pick up another one): this allowed them to keep the price down and get more turnaround for their drinks.
I sure prefer the legal framework that allows returning it regardless of the specifics (producer or such).
This did actually happen with bottled water- New York State started charging 5-cent deposits on plastic disposable bottled water, and so now some bottled-water companies sell bottles in non-deposit states with different labeling and barcodes. That seems like an exception though, since it's not often the case with other deposit beverages.
The weird one to me is that- due to various archaic laws- in New York state carbonated hard cider in cans or bottles is not considered the same as other carbonated alcoholic beverages in cans, and is exempt from all the deposits. I'm a bit surprised they haven't changed that one.
No one drove to NJ for groceries, the $5 bridge toll would offset any gains. You’d drive to one of the surrounding counties in PA, provided you lived close enough for the trip to make sense. According to that paper, that happened in about 50% of sales, which is still a net win in terms of reduced consumption.
Very little is “lost” to the city when that happens, because groceries are tax exempt.
Not sure what you think happened with property taxes, but there was no rash of store closings. Due to consumers periodically bulk buying soda at a different chain outlet or otherwise.
when it's a 100% rebate for the vast majority of people i think it does? the money doesn't go to the state, it goes to the organisation that handles the recycling, and you get a 100% rebate for doing the normal thing
In California the money goes from bottlers to a state agency and the program is essentially used to fund curbside recycling programs. The costs get passed down to consumers. While it’s indirect, it’s essentially a government service you’re taxed for that you pay either with your wallet or your labor.
Additionally, since the deposit is not exempted from sales tax, the consumer also pays more sales tax than they would otherwise.
for the rest, the only alternative I see would be for the government to get ouf of it completely and say it's up to each seller/distributor to handle their own bottles, but I guess this would require more complicated logistics?
I'm pretty sure that's what happens for glass bottles in Germany, I remember bringing back plastic crates of bottles to the brewery, and buying beer in big sturdy 50cl bottles that had obviously been refilled dozens of times already
In Finland the deposit is 0.15€ per can. You quickly learn to calculate that out when coming with cost per litre... So it only takes some getting used to.
The math a bit tougher than that. The volume of soda bottles is different now than in 1980. And most bottles aren’t glass, but plastic. Even the glass ones use different glass and cans use different amounts of aluminum. I agree that deposit values haven’t kept pace, but there are more variables at play.
I doubt the volume of the soda bottle affects the cost to the manufacturer much. Soda prices are rarely linear to their size. At my local supermarket a 2-liter bottle from the aisle is typically cheaper than a 20oz from the fridge by the register.
For plastic, you’re right. I think they use the same blanks for multiple sizes of bottles. For glass bottles, I’m not so sure. I don’t remember many plastic bottles in the 1980s. They were coming, but I still have glass in my head for all but 2L bottles at the time (but I was really young). But the point is the majority of bottles you’d see for recycling would have been glass (or cans) at that time. And the amount of materials used for packaging was different back then.
For one, it would increase the attractiveness of fraud where the same bottle is sold in multiple jurisdictions with different deposit rates. Instead of collecting trash across the border, buy cans there by the truckload, bring them back across state lines, empty them and redeem them for the "deposit" you never paid.
Of course, there are some plausible technological or political solutions to this. But it does change the economics.
This is how it works in Germany. You pay a deposit on every bottle. To get your money back requires a machine to recognise each bottle/can as legitimate, based on the bar code.
Now, yes, people could print stickers with fake bar codes on… but I don’t think that would work well at the scale of the major fraud operation you’re envisaging…
I live in Finland, it has this system, the UK where I’m from does not, you just squash your cans and bottles into a weekly recycling collection.
It’s the ‘squash’ bit that I miss and makes me hate the deposit system. You have to keep the cans all fully intact, so the machine can read the barcode, so you have to give up stacks of room in your house and carry an awkward big bag of mostly air around to return them.
Do you know if they need the cans in their original shape in order to recycle them? If it's just to keep the barcode intact, presumably it could be printed on the can's base instead.
That’s one of the best ideas I’ve heard in a while.
You sort of have to lay the can sideways on a belt and it spins it around before scanning the barcode, then it carries it to the appropriate bin internally (where it gets crushed). In my opinion it’s a waste of time, the machines are sticky and smelly and I feel sorry for the staff who have to go and un-jam them regularly, but on the upside you won’t see any littering around the place (well, in summer you will - it’s socially acceptable just to toss them on the ground but someone will be along to pick it up within minutes)
After the can gets accepted by the machine it gets crushed and sold in bulk to a 3rd party. That 3rd party is buying and selling by weigh and is usually the one who's usually getting the government check. So all barcodes do is reduce casual fraud. The pros are already injecting it higher up the supply chain.
Do they use a different bar code on bottles sold in Germany to those sold by the same producer in bordering countries? That's something American producers generally don't do for different states (yet?) - they use the same label and write the relevant deposit amount for every state on the bottle.
There’s a beer I like that’s cheaper and easier to order direct from the Danish brewery than buy from the alcohol monopoly in Finland. The cans look identical. Of course I tried putting them in the return machine, but it would not credit them (although they’ll still take them in for recycling)
People also buy huge quantities of beer personally from Estonia (2 hr boat ride, nice day trip) and the system would probably collapse in a day if they paid for cans from anywhere.
I crush any that I know won’t give money before putting them with the household metal recycling collection as I don’t want some poor soul wasting their time fishing them out and returning them.
In Sweden, and probably most of Europe as far as I would guess, the European/International Article Number [1] barcode system is used. It encodes the country first, so yes.
You cannot get cash from foreign cans or PET bottles, since the deposit was not paid here.
The EAN definitely doesn't indicate the country where the product was sold. In your Swedish supermarket, I expect you'll find plenty of products with Danish or German EANs (certainly that's the case in Ireland).
As your linked article says, "The first three digits of the EAN-13 (GS1 Prefix) usually identify the GS1 Member Organization which the manufacturer has joined (not necessarily where the product is actually made)"
Yes, they are different between Germany and Austria, which otherwise share labeling for everything - the water and juice bottles I bought while skiing in Austria were rejected for return when I got home to Germany, despite being from brands also widely sold here.
Isn't arbitrage like that just how markets are supposed to work? Still ends up with the cans redeemed and disposed, just goes about it in such a way that the maximum amount of value is extracted from them.
No. This is almost the opposite of a market-based system. Aluminium cans are artificially made available only at tens or hundreds of times their cost to produce.
> Aluminium cans are artificially made available only at tens or hundreds of times their cost to produce.
You forgot externalized costs... add the cost of cleaning up after irresponsible people leaving behind their cans wherever they want or the added costs and pollution of making a can from fresh aluminium ore (bauxite), and suddenly that "ten or hundred times" becomes "at cost".
Deposits are a regulatory way to account for externalized costs, at least to a bit.
The deposit has nothing to do with the dirtiness of mining. It's so that people like you don't see a can blowing in the wind.
If it were about the mining the deposit would be on everything else made of aluminum too.
Of all the things to let into the environment aluminum is one of the least worst. As with everything else, it's yet another story about how narratives, marketing, knee jerk reactions and bike shedding are the name of the game when it comes to public policy.
I disagree. If the amount is low enough that it only incentivises people that are desperate, you are at arms length hiring people at poverty wages. I agree that we seem to have such low expectations of our society, that wanting something better than that seems fanciful and foolish.
Wages become a market question. The more their worth the more people start looking for a limited supply. Suppose you could pick up a can every 6 seconds (including time to collect deposit) that’s 600 cans per hour at even 5c per can people would make 30$/hour which is solid pay. Except at that value people would go out if they could pickup a can every 12 seconds and make 15$/hour, down to whatever wages still motivate homeless people.
At a higher value say 25c/can picking up 1 can per minute is 15$/hour so again people would go out even if they weren’t collecting very many cans. Higher deposits should result in people doing a better job even if their not paid more.
That's basically the same reason why Uber can't give their drivers a raise, even if they wanted to. Unless they were barring new would-be drivers from joining.
Of course, that also means that they can't cut drivers' pay easily either. Especially with competition from eg Lyft.
