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The return-them challenge

05
04

An assortment of plastic bottles.
There is something about my country that really bothers me. It is not the people, the weather, or the public transport. (Well, I must admit some of them sometimes bother me too, but first place goes to someone else).

I am talking about those returnable bottles available in every supermarket. The system used to work as follows: You buy a bottle, you drink, you return it, you get money back. Then they changed it. Every supermarket had its OWN type of returnable bottle (I am not kidding), and you had to bring every bottle back to where you bought it. Otherwise, you won’t get your money back, which is about 15 Eurocents per bottle.

In 2006, they changed the system again: All types of returnable plastic bottles (glass bottles are another species) were furnished with a sign. The rule now states that EVERY supermarket has to take every bottle back, as long as it has the sign (sounds spooky, doesn’t it -) ).

Anyway, today I found myself returning plastic and glass bottles, and it turned out the supermarket has got TWO machines for returning bottles. I had to switch between machines to get all bottles returned, not knowing why there is more than one machine necessary. Finally I got a coupon for about 1,95 Euros. And felt quite exhausted… How is the system for returnable bottles in your country? Is there any system?

This was written by Daniela on April 5th, 2008 and filed under: Daily notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Comments so far to “The return-them challenge”

  1. gravatar Jessa left a comment on April 6th, 2008 at 2:48 am :

    That… sounds unbelievably ridiculous. And it almost sounds as though they’re trying to make people NOT want to return their bottles… lol. I thought recycling should be something everyone wants to do?? Why would anyone want to go through THAT kind of trouble! Yeesh.

  2. gravatar Nanda left a comment on April 6th, 2008 at 1:30 pm :

    It’s good to hear that in Germany it used to be the same as here. It’s still like that here. You buy the bottle, drink what’s in it and return it. As simple as that. I HATE the system in Germany. Especially when we go there as tourists there’s no way we can return the bottles to every shop we visit. And they now even do that with cans (well, it was like that the last time we went there…). Awful. I hate it. Heh. They should change it back to how it was, shouldn’t they?? I don’t understand why they changed that in the first place. Now my dad doesn’t really want to buy any bottles or cans in Germany… Which sucks because we need to drink too. -)

  3. gravatar Newton left a comment on April 6th, 2008 at 6:43 pm :

    I live in America. I recall “exchanging” my bottles/plastics for $5, once. It’s not compulsory. At the time, I thought it was a fortune. Please note that the bag contained upwards of 20 soda bottles.

    Homeless people often go digging through everyone’s recyclables to gain petty cash.