Word Up: das Pfand, das Flaschenpfand

Flaschenpfand n, pl. bottle deposit

   The Pfandflaschen system helps keep waste diversion under control in Germany by enticing Germans to lug their empty bottles back to the grocery store to reclaim their deposit.  Jars, aluminum cans, glass, and plastic bottles are not only recyclable, but most of the glass is returned to the food company to be refilled and resold.  And it’s worth it – the Pfand or deposit on one of these bottles can be up to 25 cents.  The Pfand you pay on food containers is calculated separately on your shopping bill, so it’s easy to see that if you don’t return your bottles, you’re throwing away the value of a few sausages or a pretzel or two.

    Only large stores are required to have a Pfand return station, but there are options as to how to recover Pfand. Some stores have machines where you feed your bottles into a drum that spins the container while  scanning for label, weight and size and then finally burps out a credit slip.  Other grocers have real live human sorters who count up your bottles and fling them into their required bins in much less time than it takes the machine to digest all of the bottle’s measurements.  While the machines are pretty efficient, the sorters are way faster.  While each person visiting the sorter depot brings on average a shopping bag worth of bottles, even a sudden wave of hoarder customers with a Mezzo-Mix addiction can be reduced to zero in a minute or two. As long as no do-gooders try to help sort their own returnables - delicately pulling single bottles out of their plastic bags and then blinking bewilderedly at all the cartons, crates, bags and bins while the sorter tries to wrench the containers out of their hands – it’s an easy and efficient way to ensure food containers end up being recycled or reused as food containers, and not thrown into the plastic melting pot to become something less useful.

    Reusable bottles, or bottles with Mehrwegpfand, have much lower deposit amounts than the Einwegpfand on single-use containers returned for recycling.  Wine, beer, and liquor have the lowest Pfand – something like 8 cents per bottle, a pretty low rate that is not surprisingly set by beer brewers themselves, while Einwegpfand is regulated by the government at a pretty high rate.  Yet, despite the smaller deposit, Mehrwegpfand containers like beer bottles have a much better return rate than Einwegpfand like water and pop bottles. And without that refund, water, the most purchased beverage in Germany, ends up being more expensive than beer.  (Stats courtesy my German textbook -  the same textbook also taught me how to ask where to find Guns N Roses cassettes, so I’d guess that its data is circa 1990.)

Image courtesy femalepeople.wordpress.com