Robust glass bottle recycling already exists and it just works. Here it’s called Pfand (deposit) and for drink (and some other) containers a law or for other containers an agreement specifies that a store has to take the containers and hand back the deposit for any type of container the store sells. Alcohol bottles apart from beer are for some reason usually not included in this scheme but it’s also used for plastic reusable and with a different deposit for single use cans and plastic bottles.
That is an implementation detail and at least here in Germany typically not the case for glass and thick walled reusable plastic. Cleaning glass bottles and reusing them is the norm here and the system exists country wide so it is literally workable at scale and other countries could if they wanted just copy legislation and the physical infrastructure for this to happen.
It apparently also has some flaws ( regulatory capture will do that to laws under capitalism) but the last sentence of the Germany section basically is enough evidence that this kind of system works and reuses bottles.
At any given time, an estimated 2 billion beer bottles are in circulation in Germany, each of which sees an average of 36 reuses.
Moreover even if not reusing deposit still gives way better return rates than any other method of recycling, at the very least keeping trash in a managed somewhat circular system.
The Car battery recycling structure is also deposit based and very successful in recovering the toxic lead in these things. So even non reuse deposits have great upside to the alternative of not having deposits.
Yeah. The system can be very successful in certain cases even if it only pushes recycling.
My statements were made in the context of a maximalist scenario. Every container sold is made to be reused and recycling is seen as a failure. In a maximalist scenario, I see a lot more breaking down in a way where a beverage industry like beer standardizing on a bottle size wouldn’t.
Robust glass bottle recycling already exists and it just works. Here it’s called Pfand (deposit) and for drink (and some other) containers a law or for other containers an agreement specifies that a store has to take the containers and hand back the deposit for any type of container the store sells. Alcohol bottles apart from beer are for some reason usually not included in this scheme but it’s also used for plastic reusable and with a different deposit for single use cans and plastic bottles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation
But a lot of container-deposit legislation as mentioned in the Wikipedia article pushes the container into recycling programs, not reuse.
That is an implementation detail and at least here in Germany typically not the case for glass and thick walled reusable plastic. Cleaning glass bottles and reusing them is the norm here and the system exists country wide so it is literally workable at scale and other countries could if they wanted just copy legislation and the physical infrastructure for this to happen.
It apparently also has some flaws ( regulatory capture will do that to laws under capitalism) but the last sentence of the Germany section basically is enough evidence that this kind of system works and reuses bottles.
Moreover even if not reusing deposit still gives way better return rates than any other method of recycling, at the very least keeping trash in a managed somewhat circular system. The Car battery recycling structure is also deposit based and very successful in recovering the toxic lead in these things. So even non reuse deposits have great upside to the alternative of not having deposits.
Yeah. The system can be very successful in certain cases even if it only pushes recycling.
My statements were made in the context of a maximalist scenario. Every container sold is made to be reused and recycling is seen as a failure. In a maximalist scenario, I see a lot more breaking down in a way where a beverage industry like beer standardizing on a bottle size wouldn’t.