German drink bottle recycling controversy basic results

Recently, a topic on the recovery of beverage bottles has become the focus of debate between the German government and businesses. The recent controversy has finally had limited results.

Germany's beverage bottle deposit decree issued last year stipulated that from January 1 this year, all deposits of beer, mineral water and other soft drinks must be collected in Germany before being returned to the bottle. Because environmentalists think people often discard these beverage cans.

The German people welcomed this from the beginning, but according to a survey in June, 55% of the people now changed their attitude. A customer complained: “My wallet is full of change, but I just don’t know where I can buy a drink like I did before.” This is because many machines are currently not equipped with recyclable cans. This means Consumers who want to retrieve their deposits must keep their purchase receipts and where to buy them, where they must withdraw beverage cans. This can be very troublesome.

The German food industry group believes that the German government's decree on drink bottle deposits has affected the sale of its drinks and strongly urges the government to repeal the decree. To this end, on June 10th they announced that they would abandon the promise of a nationwide beverage bottle recycling machine network by October this year. At the same time, Germany’s three largest retail malls stated that they are not planning to implement the beverage bottle recovery deposit decree and will stop selling beverages that meet beverage bottle recycling requirements. Germany’s Minister of the Environment, Tertín, believes that this move by the German food industry group is clearly unreasonable.

This dispute has recently been brought to court. In court, although the German food industry groups argued on the basis of the arguments, they failed to stop the enforcement of the drink bottle recycling deposit decree. They will also set up bottle recycling machines in most places in Germany. As for the customers, according to an agreement reached in court, they can recover the previously delivered drink bottle recovery deposit at the 100,000 drink sales points nationwide.

The German food industry group stated that it will build a national network of beverage bottle recycling machines by October this year. In this regard, the German Minister of the Environment Trittin welcomed the "some good sense has gradually formed in some food industries."