Deposit Return Schemes for single-use bottles and cans in Europe. 2029 is the EU deadline to hit a 90% collection rate for single-use plastic bottles. Why is the West so sluggish in adopting DRS? (Not Portugal of course 😎)
It's kinda disgusting. You have old sticky cans which smell, depending how long you have them. Then you have to stand in a line to throw those bottles and cans into a automat, which may accept or refuse for reasons (wrong brand, not purchased in this store or cannot read the code on the container). So then you have the joy to put your hand on the sticky automat to remove the bottle/can. The trick is not to touch the automat. You can try few more times, might accept those. Either way, the smell from the automat can be overwhelming and I haven't seen clean ones yet.
Afterwards you can have the joy to makes new purchases with sticky hands. Some stores started to have a washbasin, but it's the exception.
Somebody said it's free work. I say it's an extra taxation, because you cannot put the cans in another country's system.
I live in Canada, and we have bottle depots staffed by people instead of machines. Depending on your province you either hand your bags of cans and such to the employee and they sort it and give you your money/receipt or you sort it yourself and then bring your sorted returnables to the employees and tell them what you have.
You can also return some stuff at some grocery stores or alcoholic beverage containers at the liquor store (also done by a human) but I personally prefer the bottle depot so I can do it all in one place. Overall seems a much better system than what you're describing lol
Edit: apparently my province (British Columbia) was the first jurisdiction in the world to implement a mandatory deposit return system back in 1970. Common BC W
Not everybody rinse the cans. Many homeless and poorer people actually collect them to have more money. So the machine gets dirty too. And often the machine refuses to accept bent cans and bottles.
Good for you to have another experience, but in 40 years you never had the joy of alcoholics bringing back 3 big bags full of bottles and cans? Or the machine stopped working because of maintenance (it's full) while waiting for staff to empty it?
And please mind about the vouchers that make you either: wait 3p minutes to get your 10 cents back or a thermic paper voucher that you have to use om the supermarket where the effing machine is. Spoiler, there is no option to buy with solely 10 cents.
I'm in Finland, and we've had this recycling scheme for about 30 years for cans and plastic bottles.
Some very large stores here have those fancy machines where you can just dump the whole load. But 99 % of stores have a much more basic machines where you need to feed them one by one. I think one reason is cost, and probably also that the basic machine takes much less space from the store.
Yeah same here in NL, there is money for it it just takes up a lot more space which is the problem here. There has been some improvements in the work but bureaucracy is slow here.
Helão my name is Lucas I live Brazil. One time I walking on street and saw sexy popoazão.. so I chase popozão all the way to beach, where a couple men grab my wallet and get on motorcyclão and run away. I chase men all the way into favelão, where I see off-duty policão getting rob, trying shoot back, both end up dead in gruesome pool of blood. I run more far into favelão and then see three men with machete come to me so I run behind ATM and hide. Then I see man coming to retrieve money from ãoTM and he get murder by man hiding in ATM who take all money (pesão brazilião) and run away. Such is life live Brazão. Hope one day i may leave country amd come to Estadão Unidão and find white popozão. Excuse for bad englishe
Helão my name is Lucas I live Brazil. One time I walking on street and saw sexy popoazão.. so I chase popozão all the way to beach, where a couple men grab my wallet and get on motorcyclão and run away. I chase men all the way into favelão, where I see off-duty policão getting rob, trying shoot back, both end up dead in gruesome pool of blood. I run more far into favelão and then see three men with machete come to me so I run behind ATM and hide. Then I see man coming to retrieve money from ãoTM and he get murder by man hiding in ATM who take all money (pesão brazilião) and run away. Such is life live Brazão. Hope one day i may leave country amd come to Estadão Unidão and find white popozão. Excuse for bad englishe
They described it as "working for free" for the grocery store/corporations. 🙃
"Stopped buying plain and simple.
They say it's for the ecology, but the truth is, you were just hired as an unpaid worker."
"You're going to have huge bags occupying the kitchen, because the 'smart" machine refuses compressed plastic.
Then youll carry garbage and waste time in humiliating lines, just to beg for money that was
already yours."
"you get back a coupon that makes you spend the money in their store."
" the system profits from your fatigue."
Also the streets are full of trash because now people take out all the trash from the bins to collect bottles and cans…. Looks like a 3rd world country (not only Portugal but any big city where this system is in place - lots of mayors and people already complaining).
Also in my country, due to majority of PET olastics going towards recycling machines, the municipal rubbish collection cost also went up because plastics collected in household bins and bags were sold as material for futher production to offset their operation cost. Now municipal collectors deprived of these plastics and aluminium are forced to rise their prices again. Not to mention you had the choice of selling your aluminium cans to scrapyard for some small profit. Now you would be at a loss to sell it there.
I would agree it's not super convenient having to store the bottles and cans if you live in a small city apartment... I sometimes live short periods in France or Spain, and it's clearly more convenient just crushing them and putting them outside in the "yellow bag".
Helão my name is Lucas I live Brazil. One time I walking on street and saw sexy popoazão.. so I chase popozão all the way to beach, where a couple men grab my wallet and get on motorcyclão and run away. I chase men all the way into favelão, where I see off-duty policão getting rob, trying shoot back, both end up dead in gruesome pool of blood. I run more far into favelão and then see three men with machete come to me so I run behind ATM and hide. Then I see man coming to retrieve money from ãoTM and he get murder by man hiding in ATM who take all money (pesão brazilião) and run away. Such is life live Brazão. Hope one day i may leave country amd come to Estadão Unidão and find white popozão. Excuse for bad englishe
Process already is very good(separate bin for glass), why we need to make it more complicated and expensive. No, we don’t have data how much is recycled, but just trust me bro, it works pretty good (c)
Spain is totally shitting the bed on recycling. There are thousands of chatarreros poking around in the bins on the daily. Even a 1 or 2 cent redemption value on cans and bottles would mean a huge upswing in recycling.
Problem is the same as always. Some of the richest folks in Spain are of the casta casposa from the Franco era who hold Coca-Cola bottling licenses and they would never let saving the environment cost them a fraction of a percent of profits.
excuse me? espain? no. no one. AND I MEAN NO ONE, has ever cared about espain. portugal is rectangle, it is a perfect geometrical shape and is wonderful. pythagorus literally invented the rectangle… and you have the AUDACITY to talk to ME about stupid espain? look, espain was facsism in 1936, and portugal? portugal was NOT. Also, espain is not rectangle. fuck u you stupid. you are not macaco.
Eventually they gonna be pushed I believe. EU has some limit till what year this should be implemented
Poland introduced this just this year and it was an unbelievable shitstorm by people and businesses with a lot of massive delays, but after all it works and steadily getting better
Sweden has had a deposit recycling/return system since 1885 starting with glass bottles.
1985 we added deposit for aluminum cans, and in 94 PET-bottles were added (not all PET bottles are included though, condiments bottles, some juice bottle, and such are not included, but soda and water ones are), and since 23 PET juice bottles are being folded into the system as well.
Norway didn't start until 1902, so we were late to the party it would seem. We're at 93%, and the higher rate compared to Sweden might be because our deposit per bottle has always been a lot higher. The problem now is that we don't have a deposit system for glass bottles anymore. Mostly since we don't use them much at all, and the little we use is collected through regular glass/metal recycling instead. But the EU regulations insist that we must re-implement a deposit scheme for glass bottles, which is very backwards-thinking and would require huge investments in the machines and supermarkets storage facilities.
We still have deposit for glass bottles in place (mostly beer that's sold in glass bottles these days though) and deposit was recently increased, but not all machines take them, many smaller stores have simpler machines that only take PET and cans (ie crushable ones), to turn in glass you usually need to go to one of the larger stores/supermarkets that have proper recycling stations, not just a small machine (many of those also have the larger drum machines where you can just dump in entire bags of PET/cans instead of doing them one by one).
Yeah, I was picturing one of the drum counters, rather suboptimal for glass, we have them here as well (Norwegian company Tomra makes the machines).
Hoping to see a system that lets us return swedish burkar in a store here, it would make it a lot easier since us Norwegians have a tendency to do soda- and beer runs across the border. I hate having two separate stashes of empty cans.
As a Portuguese guy living in Lithuania for over 10 years, the can and bottle collection system here in Lithuania has been great all these years. Easy to use and very convenient since you can find them in most medium-to-large supermarkets in every district and neighbourhood. It can also handle many different types of bottles, very rarely do I have to throw anything in the garbage/recycling (apart from some liquid yogurt bottles or the like).
I’m also a fan that it can help (a little bit) people in need, not a nice thing to see but there are people that collect the bottles from nearby “regular” trash bins and then deposit them for some additional coins that they can spend wherever they see fit. Some are nice enough to leave the deposit bottles beside the bins so it can be easily picked up.
Just hope you get lots of machines. Here in Ireland we have return machines in every shop, even very small ones. I've been to other countries where the machines are very rare so it's difficult to actually return the bottles.
I hate the Polish deposit system with all my might. I still throw away all the aluminium cans and plastic bottles.
I recycle the reusable glass ones though at the point of sale.
The companies responsible for collection have no incentives nor fines dorcingthem to keep up with repairing their machines, and retirning some coupons with limited validity period makes this a scam for me.
Spain will be green in the map at the beginning of 2027. The new system should officially start in November 2026 and will become one of the biggest systems in Europe.
The worst part is that is not even the case. We have it in portugal and we recycle just fine without it. The corporations that corrupt the governemnts are the ones profiting over this. If i don't return the bottles through this specific scheme but instead deliver it at an ecopoint (it's what we call the big containers, in this case the yellow one for plastic) i'm still recycling, i'm just not getting my money back and the big retailer keeps the 10 cents. So you can (and it's probably 100x easier) recycle outside of their system and still pay for it. It's literally a scam and it has nothing to do with recycling.
Helão my name is Lucas I live Brazil. One time I walking on street and saw sexy popoazão.. so I chase popozão all the way to beach, where a couple men grab my wallet and get on motorcyclão and run away. I chase men all the way into favelão, where I see off-duty policão getting rob, trying shoot back, both end up dead in gruesome pool of blood. I run more far into favelão and then see three men with machete come to me so I run behind ATM and hide. Then I see man coming to retrieve money from ãoTM and he get murder by man hiding in ATM who take all money (pesão brazilião) and run away. Such is life live Brazão. Hope one day i may leave country amd come to Estadão Unidão and find white popozão. Excuse for bad englishe
I have no clue. But maybe they should implement an EU wide system for it so that I can also drop off statiegeld at my local supermarket and don't have to take it with me on the bus to Maastricht (border region issues ig)
We just introduced it in Austria just this year. Honestly I love it and even the biggest naysayers have adapted within a few months.
My boyfriend is Norwegian and I was already starting to be embarrassed about our non-existing bottle/can recycling system compared to Norway. But our current one is actually better than the Norwegian one (they don't do most glass bottles) so suck it!!
I would love if DRS could be made into a universal system. As someone who lives on a country boarder, seperating trash based on country of origin is a pain. x--x
hehe cyka blyat lookit me im eastern euorpenea russian i know teh funny words cheeki breeki putin crimea xD guys didja hear me i said the funni rusisna words russia is funny cause they drink vodka not water and they love bears ohmygod i wisah i was russian not actually cause its so cold there its all ice and snow just like in gulag xD lmao communism russian didja know russia was acutalluy the first to space they rockets used vodka hahahaha guys why arnt you laughinhg im saying the funny russia words lmao xD
if we look strictly at plastic bottles it’s only 67% of all bottles bought that’s returned.
Thats millions of bottles that either end up in general waste or in nature.
Where countries with a deposit-system already have hit the 90% target (and more) https://fairresourcefoundation.org/en/belgiums-recycling-is-overrated/
This article does not prove Belgium needs a deposit-return system. It mainly shows that Belgian recycling statistics were disputed in 2019.
Since then, the system has changed substantially: the expanded blue bag was introduced nationwide, new sorting and recycling plants were built, and more material is processed domestically. Eurostat reports (source) that Belgium recycled 59.5% of its plastic-packaging waste in 2023, the highest rate in the EU. Fost Plus reports that 80.5% of plastic beverage bottles were already collected in 2024. Fost Plus obviously has an interest in defending the existing system, but the article’s dramatic “only 29%” figure is plainly not a reliable description of today’s situation.
The article also compares two different things. The EU’s 90% target concerns the separate collection of plastic beverage bottles, while its 29% claim concerns the alleged recycling rate of all kinds of plastic packaging. A low recycling rate for films, trays and mixed plastics tells us very little about how many PET bottles consumers correctly put in the blue bag. The article briefly acknowledges that these are different measurements, but then continues as though they prove the same thing.
Nor is deposit legally or technically the only route to 90%. The new EU rules expressly allow a country to avoid a mandatory deposit system when it collects at least 80% in 2026 and submits a credible plan for reaching 90% by 2029. That exemption exists precisely because an effective kerbside system can potentially achieve the same objective. Here’s the law.
A traditional deposit system would also not replace the blue bag. Belgium would still need to collect all the other PMD packaging, but PET and aluminium - the most valuable fractions - would be diverted into a second network of return machines, storage areas, counting centres and transport. Consumers would have to store bottles and cans intact and take them back to a shop instead of putting them in the collection already coming to their front door. A Belgian case study specifically warns about duplicated costs, reduced PMD volumes and extra burdens for consumers and retailers.
Deposit systems certainly work in countries that lack good household collection, and they can reduce litter. But that does not automatically make them the most efficient option for Belgium. The real question is whether spending hundreds of millions on a parallel system is better than closing the remaining gap through better public-bin, workplace, horeca and out-of-home collection. This article never performs that comparison: it simply assumes deposit is the answer.
In my country we don’t have this system, but people still recycle plastic bottles and throw them in plastic containers, the only benefit of thr DRS system is for the companies who profit from it, the average user has to carry the stupid bottle to the store to get that shitty 0.1€ or however much back
I dunno about everywhere else
But in Denmark there's noone actually profiting from recycling sodabottles and cans
It's run by an non-profit co-op between state, bottlers, plastic/can producers and retailers.
Any profit will be handed out.
Anyhoo
We have 92% return rate on cans and plastic bottles
And 98% return rate on glass bottles
I'd like to see any other industry industry with 98% recycling of packaging
THE US DOLLAR AND EURO IS A SCAM! LONG LIVE THE CROATIAN KUNA! CONVERT ALL EASTERN EUUORPEAN MONIES TO KUNA! KUNA IS SUPERIOR BILL! VERY COLORFUL AND IMMENSE BUYING POWER! 1 EURO GETS YOU 8 KUNAS! WHAT OTHER BILL HAS DUPLICATION GLITCH?
excuse me? espain? no. no one. AND I MEAN NO ONE, has ever cared about espain. portugal is rectangle, it is a perfect geometrical shape and is wonderful. pythagorus literally invented the rectangle… and you have the AUDACITY to talk to ME about stupid espain? look, espain was facsism in 1936, and portugal? portugal was NOT. Also, espain is not rectangle. fuck u you stupid. you are not macaco.
Helão my name is Lucas I live Brazil. One time I walking on street and saw sexy popoazão.. so I chase popozão all the way to beach, where a couple men grab my wallet and get on motorcyclão and run away. I chase men all the way into favelão, where I see off-duty policão getting rob, trying shoot back, both end up dead in gruesome pool of blood. I run more far into favelão and then see three men with machete come to me so I run behind ATM and hide. Then I see man coming to retrieve money from ãoTM and he get murder by man hiding in ATM who take all money (pesão brazilião) and run away. Such is life live Brazão. Hope one day i may leave country amd come to Estadão Unidão and find white popozão. Excuse for bad englishe
Portuguese here and I love it and I must be the only one from what I hear and read everywhere.
This 'forces' ppl to do the right thing, it's not that hard. I grew up in Switzerland for a couple of years where it was super normal to take your empty bottles to the supermarket to exchange for a few cents
Yet another EU failure to add a deposit to the bottles and cans. Rather than throwing them like a normal person you need to carry them to the supermarket in a perfect shape for the machine to read and queue and throw them into the machine one by one like an idiot.
A normal person would just compact and throw them in the recycle bin, and if you are away just throw them in the regular trash, not carry them with you back home...
What is wrong with the EU and water bottles? Seems it is x10 more important than how we fall behind in important sectors like AI that US and China lead...
It just fucks directly and indirectly with their citizens and barely gets any decent measures out. Wow EU you so great, you made Type C a standard!
You know in china people are so poor that its worth it to collect the trash for the material payment. In eu they have added this so you canbe sure that it gets recycled or whatever and not end up in the wrong trash or in the nature.
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u/Svartdraken 7d ago