Continental Beer/Wine Recycling Scheme

El Inho

I was recently a student in the Netherlands for a few months, and was witness to a few great ideas.

most important was this

Money given back for return of bottles and crates.

i would buy 12 bottles in a plastic crate for about €8/9 give or take. Then go back to the shop with the empties and the crate, but it into a machine that checks the bottles and all (which can also accept wine bottles and coke bottles, fanta bottles etc, and give you money relative to missing bottles) , then gives you a little receipt you redeem against your shopping or (as i preferred) took the cost off my next purchase giving me €5 for 12 bottles until i left.

The reason i think this is a great is not just for the environment, but i would imagine companies are charging us for bottles/cans right now with no opportunity to get this money back...its a no brainer. Its one of the many things i have witnessed on my travels (like broadband speed) that makes you really angry at how this country is behind others.

Mantel

They have a similar system in Germany and I suspect many other EU countries and from what I've heard Ireland used to have a similar scheme a few decades ago, although it was all manual rather than machines

It would be nice to have here but a lot of people will recycle their glass and metal with their bins at home and pay a waste company to take it away,.. who then sort it and sell it on again.

El Inho

Mantel wrote: »

It would be nice to have here but a lot of people will recycle their glass and metal with their bins at home and pay a waste company to take it away,.. who then sort it and sell it on again.

Well from most people I know...not all students, if a few euro gets returned for your batch of bottles its very very tempting. And yeah i spotted this in Germany and in the states...(very good year I've had :P)

I used to have a stack of crates, and when times got tough would redeem them to get €15....

i know students are different but at this stage i dont think students are as different from a lot of working people.

BeerNut

Diageo pint bottles have a deposit on them and some off licences take back empties from regulars. No idea if the punter gets the deposit back, though.

Niall_G

Practially all bottles and crates in the pub trade are supplied on a refundable deposit basis. Up until a few years ago certain longnecks (heineken and bud anyway) were non-refundable but that changed - I would say all beers and minerals now carry refundable deposits; wine and spirit bottles don't.

Yes, a "few decades" (is it really that long?!) ago, shops also operated a deposit system with customers, but bear in mind this was when all drinks (or at least all from the available range of Miwadi or Lucozade!) were in glass bottles. I remember one local shop where the returned Lucozade bottles were stores outside the shop so one could simply take a few bottles back into the shop to pay for one's sweets. Not that "one" ever saw such a thing being done of course.......

In the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle hiercarchy it would of course be preferable to reuse bottles rathar than recycling them, with all the associated waste energy costs. There must be a business case for this also though. In particular, while pubs have the required storage areas now, many shops might not have. I'm sure the difficulties could be ironed out though. I think FG are actually looking at this proposal at present.

KJ

I saw this in Canada and thought it was a great idea. Another reason why I thought it was so good was because I saw homeless people picking up bottles that people had thrown away so not only are the homeless making some money but they were also cleaning up the city.

LaBaguette

As one might expect, this also happens in Belgium. A few French beer shops also do it (most notably the chain store Vins & Bières), but that's far from being the norm.

It's a very smart thing to do, but a pain in the arse when you don't have a car

the beer revolu

LaBaguette wrote: »

It's a very smart thing to do, but a pain in the arse when you don't have a car

If you can manage to lug around full bottles without a car why such a problem with empty ones?

signostic

Saw this in Gewrmany as well - supermarkets had machines which took plastic and glass bottles and you got paid through the machine for the number of bottles (plastic or glass) that you fed into the machine.
I was in a sports centre one day and had a plastic bottle which I was putting into the bin they had for plastics, and as I do here, I crushed the bottle but the guy came a long and uncrushed the bottle and said the company they dealt with only wanted uncrushed bottles - could not understanfd the reason for this.

LaBaguette

the beer revolu wrote: »

If you can manage to lug around full bottles without a car why such a problem with empty ones?

Because I'd rather carry them once than twice ?

Don't get me wrong though, this is a grand idea. Just easier when you have a car

El Inho

So is this a business opportunity? Could money be made from it? Why isnt the government doing it?

Just it was literally something i would do at least once a week...its seems like a terrible waste not having it here.

BeerNut

eldwaro wrote: »

So is this a business opportunity? Could money be made from it?

Yes: it's called glass recycling and companies are already doing it. It works so well that people don't even expect to paid for the bottles they return. Ka-ching!

eldwaro wrote: »

Why isnt the government doing it?

Why would the government do it?

rubadub

Niall_G wrote: »

Yes, a "few decades" (is it really that long?!) ago, shops also operated a deposit system with customers, but bear in mind this was when all drinks (or at least all from the available range of Miwadi or Lucozade!) were in glass bottles....

preferable to reuse bottles rathar than recycling them, with all the associated waste energy costs.

I remember it in the 80's, going to dunnes in cournelscourt with bottles and putting them in the machines while the mother was doing shopping. Never understood why they stopped it, if it was still going the miwadi etc would be in glass bottles. Same goes for milk bottles, I liked downing a pint from the bottle and would love to see them come back. And resuing is far better as you say, also win win as the customer gets a more sturdy bottle (that you can use for homebrew;))

I have seen reusable plastic bottles in some countries, really hard PET, these would be handier for people to bring back.

BeerNut wrote: »

Why would the government do it?

It could possibly save government money if they promoted it. It must cost a lot to clean up all those smashed beer bottles on the streets, I remember cycling to school when there were no cheap bottles, there was far less glass compared to now since the advent of the "€1 bottle" some years ago. I don't know the economics of recycling, but reusing makes far more sense, and I would bet taxpayer money is being squandered somewhere disposing/recycling all these bottles.

They introduced the plastic bag levy which cleaned up the streets a lot, kids would bring back bottles if they were ditched somewhere, just like at oxegen they charged a deposit on the glasses and people picked up this "litter".

BeerNut

rubadub wrote: »

Never understood why they stopped it

I can totally see why, once the price of glass manufacture drops below a certain threshold it would no longer make sense to buy in the expensive re-usables (not all of which you'll get back or be able to re-use) and build and maintain the equipment for cleaning them, as well as maintain the supply lines from wherever people leave the bottles. If your business is very small and very local it can make sense, but once you get to a certain size it's impractical. It works for drinks to pubs because the supply line is shorter and the pub would have to pay to dispose of the glass while a household doesn't.

rubadub wrote: »

I have seen reusable plastic bottles in some countries, really hard PET, these would be handier for people to bring back.

Teaching people that these aren't the sort you throw away is the hard bit. How do you set a deposit that will make it worth the customer's while to return the bottle but not put them off buying the product in the first place? I brought bottles back for 10p when I was a kid. Inflation and currency conversion make that 27c today. Is 27c worth it to a modern 10 year old?

rubadub wrote: »

It could possibly save government money if they promoted it.

Spend-money-to-save-money schemes tend not to be so popular when times are hard, especially when the savings are as small as this would be.

rubadub wrote: »

They introduced the plastic bag levy which cleaned up the streets a lot

With minimal set-up costs to Revenue and retailers. I'd want a bloody big incentive to convert my business infrastructure from one-way to reusable bottles.

El Inho

cant help but feel that if a shop like supervalue rolled out the return machines for bottles it would become popular very quickly...

customer makes a little money back,
suppliers reuse their bottles,
waste costs reduced,
surely helps the gov towards some carbon footprint target thingy??

once the initial cost of getting it set up is out of the way its sorted!

i think our gov is afraid to spend money on such things...you know a big long hole with a luas in it in dublin is money much better spent :P

El Inho

BeerNut wrote: »

Teaching people that these aren't the sort you throw away is the hard bit. How do you set a deposit that will make it worth the customer's while to return the bottle but not put them off buying the product in the first place? I brought bottles back for 10p when I was a kid. Inflation and currency conversion make that 27c today. Is 27c worth it to a modern 10 year old?

.

from my experience the costs of the goods doesnt vary. when you buy a drink you are currently paying for the container also...

by introducing this system you simply get the chance to redeem the cost of the container.

a coke of €1.50 would become 1.30 from now on

BeerNut

eldwaro wrote: »

cant help but feel that if a shop like supervalue rolled out the return machines for bottles it would become popular very quickly

And what would Supervalu do with the bottles? Virtually every bottle they sell is not fit for reuse. For a bottle return system you need returnable bottles. I think you're missing the drink makers' role in all this.

rubadub

BeerNut wrote: »

I can totally see why, once the price of glass manufacture drops below a certain threshold it would no longer make sense to buy in the expensive re-usables

Yes, that makes sense to me, but I am still left wondering what is so different about here though, when it is still in place in other european countries with similar enough supermarkets.

I remember years ago mates living in the countryside in holland and you got them in good plastic crates, and dropped them back in the crates. It was very easy and kept the house clean too! no build up of bottles you might get in lazy student type houses.

BeerNut wrote: »

How do you set a deposit that will make it worth the customer's while to return the bottle but not put them off buying the product in the first place?

well again the other countries seem to manage it. If I knew I was getting the money back it wouldn't matter to me if it was 50cent, or even a euro, which I think was the deposit on glasses at oxegen (it was forced but none of my mates complained much, it was sensible). As long as it was cheaper than buying non-return bottles I have no problem (this happened in holland, we never bought non-returnables as they were much dearer). Many customers will want to do it to "be green" and most would percieve reusable bottle as being green (even if evidence shows it not to be for whatever reason).

BeerNut wrote: »

I brought bottles back for 10p when I was a kid. Inflation and currency conversion make that 27c today. Is 27c worth it to a modern 10 year old?

I used to buy bars with mine, think they were about 20p in multipacks with inflation taken into account bars have come down in price in mulitpacks. Its also the gimmick of it though, I used to love putting them in and getting the money. It was really just a way of giving kids more pocket money, with the amount I drink it would be well worthwhile for a kid to bring them back!

I'd want a bloody big incentive to convert my business infrastructure from one-way to reusable bottles.

BeerNut wrote: »

And what would Supervalu do with the bottles? Virtually every bottle they sell is not fit for reuse. For a bottle return system you need returnable bottles. I think you're missing the drink makers' role in all this.

This would be perfect for the likes of lidl who have their own established brands of beers, and from the stocking levels I see their own brands are the best sellers (compared to the small amounts of own brand stock you see in tesco & dunnes). It would be a real gimmick, get in people looking for a bargain (its already cheap), and the environmentalists in, who will probably buy other stuff too. That could be a real incentive, and other supermarkets and manufacturers might take note and copy them. You see lots of "green ads" now, like the kenco one reducing packaging, and dilutable miwadi drinks, fairy liquid and detergents being double concentrated, they all have copied each other.

El Inho

also in the states they have water points...

lob in a quarter and a gallon drum and it fills it with water...great idea...you buy on drum of water and then refil it...actually shops only sell water like a vending machine...

considering so many people hate tap water these days

BeerNut

rubadub wrote: »

what is so different about here though, when it is still in place in other european countries with similar enough supermarkets.

At some point here cheap one-way bottles became more cost effective than re-usables. The system was changed and it's very expensive to put back. It's a bit like the railways, I guess. "I remember..." and "In other countries..." won't bring them back either.

rubadub wrote: »

with the amount I drink it would be well worthwhile for a kid to bring them back!

As long as you never drink anything imported, then. No matter what system you use they're not likely to take bottles from abroad. Not until the introduction of the eurobottle

rubadub wrote: »

This would be perfect for the likes of lidl who have their own established brands of beers

Until they own their own bottling lines it's irrelevant. They'd have to tanker the beer from their various contract breweries to a Lidl-owned bottling plant where the bottles are filled and labelled. Do you really think this would work out more cost effective than get the individual breweries to supply a finished, shelf-ready product?

Oh, I'm forgetting, they could also install, maintain and distribute bottles to a Lidl-only bottling plant in every brewery they deal with :rolleyes: