Recycling - it works!

Germany has a very successful history in recycling. Due to the political system small parties, like the environmentally engaged ‘Die Grünen‘ have enough seats in the government to influence some changes. The deposit system of bottles is nothing new. It was practiced nearly everywhere with milk bottles, which were returned, cleaned and refilled. In the 80’ies, this was extended to beer, water and soft drink bottles.

These are split into two different kinds of bottles. ‘Mehrwegflaschen’, which means ‘More-way-bottle’, are bottles which can be cleaned and reused and are usually made out of glass or a thicker, heat resistant plastic. ‘Einwegflaschen’, which means ‘One-way-bottles’, are used only once, but are melted down and used to produce new bottles. We therefore have two circular approaches here, reusing and recycling.

Each bottle has a different value assigned to it. ‘One-way-bottles’ do have a 0,25 € deposit on them, while ‘More-way-bottle’ vary between 0,08 € and 0,50 €. By purchase of one of these bottles this amount is put on top of the price of the product (the liquid), which raises awareness for the value of the packaging material, the bottle. After the operation phase, the drinking, the bottle is returned to any kind of supermarket. The label has to be unbroken for the machines to scan the bar code. The money gained is shown on a display and a receipt is printed. The receipt is paid out at the checkout.

These small sums usually add up and create enough of an incentive for most people to return their bottles. The few who don’t support indirectly poorer people, who collect bottles in bins and return them for the deposit. It has an additional benefit of clean parks and river sides, even after busy Saturday summer evenings (it is allowed to drink outside), because clever people just go for a morning walk and collect hundreds of bottles.

It is a beautiful system and a perfect example for Great Service Design. It helps the environment, businesses have to spend less money on producing bottles, material is saved and the cities are cleaner. Some countries followed this example to some degree. In New South Wales in Australia a bottle return scheme started in 2016. All their bottles are ‘One-way-bottles’, so only the material is being recycled, but it is better than nothing.