absolutely exhausted and bottle recycling

in an effort to avoid usual 'packing like a bat outta hell the night before i fly back to the US' experience, i've spent today running around getting things in order, well in advance of flying on thursday of next week. the bulk of the xmas gifts were actually purchased in lithuania this year in oct, so it was only some supplemental 'typical' german things that had to be purchased today, such as beer and chocolate.

today was also 'bottle return' day for me. here in deutschland, when you purchase soda, beer, or bottled fizzy water, you usually pay a deposit on that bottle, be it glass or plastic or sometimes aluminum. it encourages recycling since you just paid anywhere from 8 to 25 euro cents on the bottle/can. further, it's relatively convenient, because any place that sells you a bottle with a deposit or 'pfand' must also accept back that bottle and then return your deposit.

however, there are 'networks' of recycling, so one must pay attention. sometimes you'll buy something (like a can of red bull or a bottle of pepsi) from a petrol station and another from the supermarket. both come from germany and look the same and you were charged the same pfand (25 cents) on each, although the price for the item itself could be slightly different. there could be different markings on the back of the bottle signifying to which network it belongs and words telling you to return it for your pfand. however, if you try to return the supermarket's bottle back to the petrol station, they do not need to take it back, since they can tell that you did not purchase it there, since it often has a different symbol on the back. Thus you're forced to hold on to it, and to remember that it needs to go back to the supermarket instead.

fortunately, there is often a sign next to where you return bottles that clearly identifies which symbols on the back of the bottles that they will accept, and often that water than you bought two towns away is actually part of the same supermarket network, so even through they do not sell that type of water, they will accept back that water bottle from you as it has one of their 'accepted' network symbols.

This whole complicated system could explain why many Germans seem to have a routine of buying the same one crate of beer and the same one crate of water each Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. (A crate varies in quantity depending on bottle size, but is usually standard among a certain type of beverage, i.e. water.) Then, the next time that they go back, they bring back the crates with the empty bottles completing the one in/one out loop each week. Usually you buy your beverages at the supermarket here, but they will be in a separate entrance connected to the supermarket, so you go in the 'beverage only' part separately. Or you could go to a 'drink market' which is the closest thing to a Pennsylvania beer distributor that I've ever seen.

Since I buy for one, I tend not to buy a whole crate of anything, or I'll need to step over a crate of water, another crate of beer, etc. in my kitchen of limited storage space. Therefore, I buy only a few bottles at a time in the supermarket proper. The advantage of buying beverages in the supermarket is that if you are like me and you only buy a few bottles total, then you can just pick them up as you pick up your other food. It saves you from having to go into the separate beverage place. Whether you buy in the supermarket or in the 'connected beverage place' (i'm sure there's an official German word for it), it's the same price. Finally, the soda and water selection is better in the supermarket, and they also sell more of the smaller, single serving of things, like cans of coke. When you need a bigger selection of beer or anything coming in a crate, the connected place is better.

Over time then, I tend to accumulate bottles and cans since I'm not returning them each week. I have a large box in my closet that I put empty bottles into and then every three to six months I go through it and sort them out so that I can take them in groups back to where they belong. Some just go back in the box when I know where they need to go, but it's not a destination today. Here was today's lot:

- 10 Portuguese brown glass beer bottles. No pfand, but to the recycling pods for brown glass.
- 1 Evian water bottle. oops, from France actually as the label contains no German, so no pfand. Into the 'gelb sack' or plastic recycling bag you go.
- 2 Polish beer bottles from a few months ago. From a small market in my tiny town. 13 cents each.
- 1 single can of Coke. No idea where it came from but it's in German. Back into the box.
- 1 small water bottle from a train station I occasionally go through when I switch trains going toward Duesseldorf. back into the box.
- 1 large (1 liter) glass water bottle from a Turkish pizza place one town over, back in the box.
- 3 large glass water bottles from the Kaufmarkt. 15 cents each, I think.
- 6 cans of Red Bull. They're a big hit at 25 cents each. I take along one to try at the automatic bottle return machine inside the supermarket.
- 2 plastic water bottles from the PennyMarkt. Into another bag to be taken back to the PMarkt.
- 1 plastic Pepsi bottle from the PMarkt, into that bag.
- 1 .3 Liter Sprite bottle that is of questionable origin. However, it has the pfand word on it, so it goes into in a 'questionable' bag to try at the Kaufmarkt.
- 2 glass beer bottles from Kaufmarkt.
- 6 glass beer bottles from a Belgian supermarket. They clock in at 15 cents each, so I take them down to my cellar storage area to be out of the way until I next make a Belgian trip.
- 2 plastic .5 Aquafina water bottles. Those are easy ones to return since they are sold in many places.
And on and on....

So as I was doing my final shopping/running around I was returning bottles along the way. There are two new machines at the PMarkt for bottle returns. You insert the plastic bottle into the mouth of one of the machines, it spins it inside to read the bar code and maybe weigh it, and then the mouth closes and it squashes the bottle and then the mouth opens again for another. It keeps a running tally on a little LCD screen next to the mouth, of bottles returned and the amount to be returned. Once you are out of bottles, there is a green button to press and it gives you a receipt to take to the cash register in order to get your money.

So all told, I think I made just under 4 euros total on my bottle returns today. Overall, I'm not sure it's really worth the monetary effort which is why if you are going to a picnic or on a train, people will often leave their 8 cent glass beer bottles behind as they can be heavy to carry around and there are regular 'bottle pickers' who will pick them up from where ever you leave them in a public place. If you are holding an empty, they'll even offer to take it for you and often to put it in their sack in an elaborate setup of bags rigged to a bicycle that shows that they spend 8 hours of a Sunday finding bottles for return.

However, it's one more thing sorted before going back to the US. And no, for those people in the US who are getting a bottle of German beer as a gift from me, I will not bring those bottles back for the pfand. ;-)