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Comment by _Microft | Hacker News Reader

We have something like that in Germany. For consumption at home, mineral water or carbonated lemonade beverages are usually available in standardized bottles [0] and bottle crates [1] (which can be conveniently stacked). The bottles can be refilled up to 50 times until they need to be taken out of the cycle. You can usually return them at shops that sell them, even if you haven't bought them at this exact shop. There is a (small) deposit per bottle and crate that incentivizes returning them.

[0] (german) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normbrunnenflasche

[1] (german) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getr%C3%A4nkekiste

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I liked this system a lot when I lived in Germany. Although living in a 4th floor apartment without an elevator, buying crates of heavy duty glass bottles was a bit of a drag compared with cans.

The bottles are great to drink out of though and, since they have real redeemable value, you don't see empty bottles littering the street.

There are companies like flaschenpost now that deliver the bottles and collect them when they’re empty.

Wie weist man wie viele Male eine Flasche schon genutzt wird?

Parent comment said: "How does one tell how often a bottle was used already?"

I don't think one can tell. How I would go about it: calculate the average number of reuse by knowing how many bottles my factory has filled and how many new bottles it needed to introduce/throw out for that. I would also sort out bottles only depending on wear and tear. As long as the bottle is good enough, reuse it one more time.

Where I live we had glass beverage bottles until 2008 it was common to see wear marks on the bottles. Both for beer and pop bottles it was obvious they weren't new some even had chips.

There are small bulges on the bottles which get worn away and allow making a rough estimate of uses. The german wikipedia link above has a a little bit more detailed explanation

I would assume there isn't a magic number which can't be exceeded, but something which can be observed usually happens around that time, i.e. the glass becomes visibly cloudy and it's undesirable to sell new product in them, as opposed to invisible cracks in carbon fiber composites which require ultrasound to detect.

Very interesting.

It was absolutely the same in Soviet Union.

I still remember formula from my childhood: 3 empty bottles (10 kopeks each) + 3 kopeks = 1 full bottle of lemonade (33 kopeks).

I think it was a good thing, less glass garbage at least.

> You usually return them at shops that sell them, even if you haven't bought them at this exact shop.

It seems that such things needs some central regulation, they did not survive in pure capitalism

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