[rladd]

This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage.

[kwhitefoot]

Here in Norway a half litre or smaller container has a deposit of 2 kr, bigger containers are 3 kr (22 and 33 US cent respectively).

But it isn't the size of the deposit that drives the return rate (95% or more here in Norway) it is the ease of doing it.

Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return even if they were not purchased in that shop and even if they are of a different brand.

So every supermarket has a reverse vending machine [1] where you deposit the bottles and cans and get a receipt that you can exchange for money or goods at the till.

[1] Usually from Tomra: https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse-vending/deposit-...

[Aissen]

Saw that at your neighboor's in Copenhagen, and after the first outrage of paying +50cts per drink, I understood that I was seeing a glimpse the future… If littering is equivalent to throwing money, you simply won't do it.

Weird side-effect: homeless people might ask for your empty bottle and do the collection. Not sure how I feel about that though…

[EE84M3i]

>Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return

How does this work for convenience stores or other non-supermarkets that incidentally sell drinks in cans/bottles? They have to have a machine?

[Semaphor]

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.

[dahfizz]

I live in the US, and all grocery stores I have been to have those reverse vending machines.

I also never bother to return my bottles and cans, because it's still a waste of my time. I put all bottles and cans in the recycling, along with anything else recyclable (on the backend, almost everything goes to a landfill anyway. But that's not my problem.)

Edit: for those asking, I have lived in multiple New England states, and bottle return machines have been common in all of them.

[bemmu]

At the large Finnish LAN party / demoscene event Assembly, there are people who go around all the desks collecting the cans and bottles people leave on them. I wonder how much they make doing this, considering there are thousands of desks with everyone consuming energy drinks and soda nonstop.

[kebman]

The cost of food is suppressed, because our elites, leaders and politicians know what happens when that too is subjected to inflation as well, and that is revolution. Meanwhile, as far as I can see, the frog-boiling of regular people has been steady at least since the 60's. Back then the cost of a nice apartment was about one or two years pay. Today it's easily 10 years pay, and so the former middle class opt out of having children because all value property is too high for them to afford. Meanwhile the only promise our elites are willing to give us, is that we'll own nothing and be happy. Well, we'll see about that. Because what's happening now is that they are now unable to keep inflation from also seeping into everyday products. Gas and power is already buckling here in Europe, and I suspect food prices will be next. Unless they can control it, then social unrest is sure to follow.

[pxtail]

> former middle class opt out of having children because all value property is too high for them to afford

Don't worry, just go ahead and don't forget to wince when looking at demographics stats, South Korea and Japan will be your guide.

[MomoXenosaga]

Don't forget the wonderful American invention of the "gig economy". Minimum wage, healthcare, job security? No we must destroy everything our ancestors fought for.

[rhuru]

Here in california the fee per bottle and can goes to state as taxes. You can get it back by turning in bottles and cans at a recycling center but the California state had made it impossible to return these cans for money. They have systematically shut down automated recycling redemption machines, caused long lines at in person centers and so on.

[function_seven]

> They have systematically shut down automated recycling redemption machines

I remember these machines outside of every grocery store, and now I don't see them anywhere anymore. It never occurred to me it was a purposeful effort, but then again I never gave it much thought.

What caused the machines to disappear?

[rootusrootus]

I think Oregon has the right idea. We did invent the bottle bill, so I guess that isn't a complete surprise. The redemption value is tied not to inflation, but to redemption rate. If it drops low enough, the deposit is increased. We started at 5 cents, and in 2015 the redemption rate had slipped down to 65%, so the deposit was doubled to 10 cents.

[gkop]

Ok so we raise money to rent giant warehouses, hit the streets and buy up all the bottles for 10 cents, and then just warehouse them. Redemption rate slips, deposit increases -> profit.

[thaumasiotes]

> to give the collectors a living wage.

Why would this be a goal?

[relaxing]

1. Cans need to be collected

2. Everyone needs a living wage

Hope this helps.

[PeterisP]

If collecting doesn't pay enough to be worth doing, it does not get done.

[efficax]

In Germany, at least last time i was there, a plastic bottle got you a full Euro back as a deposit. Aluminum a little less but still good. The result was you basically never saw a plastic bottle on the ground outside of tourist areas where people didn't know about the Pfand. And even there, the bottle doesn't stay on the ground for long because that's a whole euro there on the ground. Nobody throws away a whole euro, and just about every one will bend down to pick one up.

[umvi]

> This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage

It's not just inflation you have to keep up with but also falling material costs as aluminum is more mass produced, etc.

Where does the money come from for the refunds? Without government subsidies I don't think it would make economic sense for a recycling center to pay $.50 or even $.25 per can if the amount of aluminum scrap is only worth $.10

[i_am_proteus]

Typically these function as deposit programs: e.g. $0.10 per can is levied at retail purchase, to be hypothetically returned when the can is turned in for recycling, effectively creating bounties for the pickup and recycle of cans discarded rather than recycled.

[night862]

Deposit is paid by the purchaser, you reclaim the .5 or .10 deposit when you return them for recycling.

[najqh]

Precisely what we need is to make the deposit prices so high that the homeless will fight over them. Then we can record them and upload the videos to liveleak.

Oh...

[tdeck]

Where I live we have curbside recycling and people are paid a living wage to come by in a truck and pick it up. However, the folks 'collecting" these cans are actually taking them out of the bins during the night / morning before pickup.

[gambiting]

The cost of drinks largely hasn't increased in line with inflation, so you'd very quickly arrive at an unsustainable situation where returning a can/bottle would give you more money than it cost you to buy it.

[gnicholas]

It can never give you more than it cost — the redemption value gets added to the cost of the beverage. So a $1 bottle of Coke would cost $1.05 if the redemption value were 5¢ And it would cost $1.50 if the redemption value were 50¢.

The reason the redemption value has not gone up much is that people would balk at paying so much for the goods upfront, IMO. Adding 20¢ per can would add nearly $5 to the cost of a 24-pack or soda. The cost per ounce of soda drops dramatically when you buy in volume, so the redemption value would grow to be a substantial portion of the total cost for larger purchases.

[midasuni]

If it had kept up with inflation a 45c bottle including 10c deposit in 1980 would be $1.52 including 33c deposit today

Instead it’s about $2

[mschuster91]

Why is this unsustainable? You would still have to pay for the drink and deposit before you get the deposit back.

[eru]

That's a bit silly.

Bottle deposit are there to incentivise some people to return them. They just need to be high enough to do that.

[monkeycantype]

I disagree. If the amount is low enough that it only incentivises people that are desperate, you are at arms length hiring people at poverty wages. I agree that we seem to have such low expectations of our society, that wanting something better than that seems fanciful and foolish.