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Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

Same in Germany, there is also the "Pfand gehört daneben" (Deposit [bottles] belong next [to the trashcan]) campaign, often with bottle holder on the trash can.

The whole deposit system is extremely convenient when you are drinking in the park or beach, where you usually don't want to bring all the bottles back again, but you'll get people coming by and ask if you have any deposit bottles to give to them.

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> Same in Germany

Too many stores refuse to take bottle types that they don't sell though. I am often left with one or two bottles that technically should be eligible, but I have to take them back with me. The Norwegian way seems more convenient for consumers.

I think from a certain size on, they have to take them back. I understand smaller stores not wanting/having to bother. But maybe I'm wrong, after all I almost exclusively buy from REWE, so it's never something I encounter personally.

I think my most recent experience was a LIDL that wouldn't take a beer bottle from REWE.

Same. My local Lidl doesn't sell any Glas bottle at all, so that's why they don't take it.

I encounter this mostly when buying craft beer from a specialized store. These import bottles have Pfand too, but you can't return them to any machine. Have to remember which ones go back to the craft beer shop. Which is kinda obvious though, so I'm not complaining.

Isn’t there a decline in deposit bottle usage in Germany?

When I was a kid beer was delivered to your house by the crate and empties picked up. I was led to believe this has become less common, which would be regrettable bc it was elegantly efficient.

There's Flaschenpost[1] in some cities, and afaik it's pretty popular. Me and my partner use it pretty regularly.

[1] https://www.flaschenpost.de/

wow, what a badly designed site. I can't even look at it because it keeps pestering me with some popup that asks for my ZIP code (which I don't want to provide, as I just want to know what that page is all about)

Deliveries, I don't know. But every sparkling water, beer bottle has deposit as have all (?) cans. So a decline would be kinda impossible unless people stop buying those.

Every other month I see old products going from "disposable" to "with deposit". So I don't think so. The latest for me were the tiny juice bottles from Rewe. 25c Pfand.

Edit: it's reusable/refillable bottles that I am remembering and referring to, and I'm happy to say the system in Germany seems to be strong, per Google.

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