The Burden of Plastic and Aluminum

 About 18 years ago, deposit rules started up in Germany over soda cans/plastic bottles.  Typically 25 cents per each.  This meant while out for a picnic on Sunday....the six-pack of sodas you took along for you, the spouse and kids....had to be collected at the end and put into some bag you kept in the basement.  Then at the end of the month, you'd take this bag with forty-odd bottles/cans to the grocery to 'redeem' them.  

In the beginning, even I grumbled about the practice and the wife's personal regulations how we'd maintain the bag and the redeem visit to the grocery.  

I've been to some of the grocery return points and stood there in line behind people who had five or six bags (figure forty cans/plastic bottles in each) and patiently waited until they were done.  

Well....the German government has decided to go onto the next level of enforcement.

Starting in 2022, fruit/vegetable juice cans/plastic bottles....will have a deposit of 25 cents each as well.  In 2024, milk plastic bottles will also have the the deposit situation.

After 2024, there won't be a single container left at that point....which doesn't have a requirement to return (if it is plastic or aluminum).  

You can figure that an average weekly visit.....there's going to be at least ten to twenty bottles involved in this scheme....adding up potentially to five Euro....just for deposit situations.

For the craftsmen folks who stopped off for a bite to eat and grabbing a smoothie in the refrigerated area?  Well....that's adding up to 1.25 Euro in deposits a week.  Naturally, you will return the item and get the money back.....but it's a another regulated part of general life.  

Wine and booze bottles?  Still exempt but it's only a matter of time before they get to the same position.  Soup cans and aspirin bottles?  It wouldn't shock me if in ten years, they've also been included in the group.  By 2030, you might have a 40-liter bag of plastic bottles (soap, shampoo, jelly, mustard, ketchup, etc) to return each week, to redeem twenty-five Euro of your money back.