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Comment by igivanov | Hacker News Reader

>glass

In the good old USSR there was a limited number of sizes/styles of glass bottles and jars in circulation. Each one had a deposit value, and if it had no cracks/chips and all labels were removed, it could be returned for direct reuse, i.e. no melting and further manufacturing was involved. I think it worked OK since it had existed for many decades, and energy was cheap in those days.

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Small dairies in the US do this. Our milk comes in glass bottles and we return them for reuse. I've always hoped this would catch on more.

Ditto. I buy milk from Homestead Creamery. Besides being the best milk I can find in Atlanta, they clean and reuse the bottles. You pay a $2 deposit, which you get back when you bring the bottles back to the store. Presumably they then ship them back to the creamery when they get the shipments of milk in.

It used to be very common. But paperboard or plastic containers are much lighter and save on transportation costs. They also don't have to be returned, cleaned, and sanitized before re-use.

IIRC, that is also how they handle half liter beer bottles in places like Germany and Netherlands. As an American, I saw it and thought "Wow. That just makes so much sense. Why don't we do that?"

Perhaps one reason is that those bottles, while completely functional, tend to look pretty rough and worn out after a while, it's obvious that they've been recycled and aren't new.

Is that something a company wants to take a risk on when it comes to the psychology of consumer choice?

You can always take those too worn bottles and recycle that subset into shiny new bottles..

Market the used ones as more valuable than new.

It wasn't all that long ago we did. I remember in the mid-80's buying soda at the grocery store in 6-packs of glass bottles, and bringing the empty bottles back to the store for a discount when buying more. The empties were sent back to the bottling plant, washed, and refilled. It was really interesting seeing the branding variations, depending on the age of the bottle, on the store shelves. I still have a 60's-era 7-Up bottle that had been through around 20 years of reuse when I bought it.

In India Coca Cola or any cold drink 330ml bottles cost about Rs 30, & you get Rs 2 discount/cash-back if you bring the empty one back to the shop

We did -- at least in some places. I remember as a kid sometimes going with my parents to the local brewery. They'd bring back their empty bottles and pick up a fresh pack at a discount.

It's making something of a resurgence in popularity with the craft brewery movement in the United States and the accompanying popularity of growlers and growler fills.

Partly the reason the United States doesn't use reusable bottles anymore is because breweries became national instead of regional in the 1960s and 1970s. When your brewery is located in the same state as the beer is consumed it is easier to get the bottles back. If you are Coors and produce in one plant in Colorado it is more difficult and expensive to get your bottles back from Florida. Also the cost of shipping the heavier reusable bottles negates some of the cost savings as well.

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