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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

Your "chips model" works perfectly well for thousands of products. Want detergent? Bring a bottle to a machine that fills it up rather than taking home a brand new plastic bottle every time. Ditto for fruits and vegetables. Biscuits. Candy. Anything that doesn't need a plastic bag for health and safety reasons.

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How would fill-your-own-bottle work with online shopping and home delivery, which more and more people are doing even for groceries?

You could do it like the milk men where you put out your old container and they bring you a new one. Instead of refilling it yourself the used one goes back to be refilled at the factory or whatever.

Put a deposit on the bottle that it comes in, similar to how states like Michigan have a bottle deposit. Make it large enough that the consumer would be incentivized to return the bottle, even if they themselves don't actually re-use it. This way they could simply return the empty bottle, even if they don't plan on refilling it.

What you are describing is simply a bottle recycling program as it already exists in a number of European countries. But the OP was talking about the need for alternatives to bottle-recycling programs.

1. A factory ships a product to the seller in a durable container. Puts $1 into a smart contract to resolve on that container's return.

2. I buy $5 worth of product in durable container from seller and pay $7.

3. Seller gets $5, remaining $2 goes into smart contract from step 1.

So now there's three incentives to get the container back to the factory (each is $1 in this example, but would be a parameter in reality).

4. If the container shows up at the factory at all, whoever delivers it gets $1 for facilitating the delivery and the factory gets their $1 back because they didn't contribute to litter.

5. If it arrives back at the factory clean and in good condition, I get $1 back for not contributing to litter and for doing my part to ensure that the container is reusable rather than merely recyclable.

If you find a durable container in the wild that doesn't have a bounty on it, it's proof that the factory is cheating and the government gives you a $1 for it, and takes that $1 out of the factory's taxes.

If you find a bottle with the factory's bounty but not the consumer's bounty, it's evidence that the seller or buyer is cheating. The government gives you $2 for it and collaborates with the factory to take $2 out of the seller's taxes.

If you find a container with both bounties on it, it's evidence that I was too lazy to take it back to the factory, so you give it to the factory and get the $1 reward.

If I keep the container and repurpose it, the factory doesn't get their $1 back, but whatever I'm using it for hopefully counts as good advertising for them. Also, I can always just return it much later when it's done with the reuse purpose.

If you find a damaged container in the wild, recycle it with society's thanks and know that whoever let that happen paid $1 for their crime.

are you familiar with deposits in parts of the world? The aluminum cans have 10c stamped on the lid, and the bottles have it printed on their labels.

I couldn't be bothered going to a recycling depot so I would leave my recyclables outside next to the bins. People would walk around afternoon/night collecting all the recyclables with deposits from people's bins (recycling and trash).

It seems far simpler than your proposal.

I am, they seem like a great idea and I wish they were common in my part of the world.

But they only motivate manufacturers' packaging choices in the rare case where it's more cost effective to recycle the material than to purchase it new. If it's cheaper to use something that ends up in a landfill, most companies just will.

I think we need something that motivates them to want it back no matter what it's made out of.

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I make beer and I've been reusing the same bottles for years. The trick is to rinse them right away, otherwise it's a pain to get the dried beer gunk off the bottom. Bottle return programs don't motivate users to clean the bottles, so they need to be recycled rather than merely sanitized and reused (I think).

Recycling is unfortunately not a guarantee even when consumers do everything right. Plenty of curbside recyclables end up in landfills.

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