Recycling in Germany - The Pfand System

The Germans are fanatical about their recycling. They have different bins for different coloured glass bottles located around the neighbourhood, and of course every apartment building has bins to separate paper, plastic and normal waste. They have also adopted a great system to encourage everyone to recycle their plastic and glass drinks bottles. Every time you buy a bottled drink you pay a "pfand" or deposit on the bottle, which you get back when you return the empty bottle.

Take this delicious 6-pack of Grafenwalder Pils beer.

At our local Lidl supermarket this 6-pack of 500ml beers costs a ludicrously cheap €1.69 (about AUD$2.50). However you also pay an extra €0.25 per bottle as a deposit as the sign below explains. "6 x 0.5L bottles + €1.50 deposit, Single bottle €0.29 + €0.25 deposit." So when you go to the counter you actually hand over €3.19.

These beers come in a plastic bottle, which have higher value deposits than glass bottles which are usually €0.15 for beer. After you have finished your drinks, you bring the empty bottles back to Lidl and head to the "Pfandautomat" machine. You put the empties into the hole and it scans the barcode and gives you back the appropriate credit.

When you are done you press the blue button and it spits out a little ticket like this with your amount of credit on it. I returned 12 plastic bottles here to get back €3.00. You then take this ticket with you to the counter with your shopping and this will be deducted off your bill. Or you can just get cash if you aren't buying anything. There was a homeless guy trading in a giant sack of bottles he'd found for cash just before me.

The plastic bottles are crushed inside the machine and presumably sent to a factory somewhere to be melted down and used again.

When you buy a carton of glass bottles at the bottle shop, they come in a re-usable plastic crate like a milk crate which you also pay a deposit on. You take the empty glass bottles back to the shop next time and they are re-used. You can see the wear rings on this bottle just above and below the label due to it being used over and over.

So the more you drink, the more you save the planet! (or something like that.....)

- Joe