Berlin Bin Botherers

August 2, 2007 3:29 AM

Whilst at Berlin Tegel Airport, my significant other noticed that while you had the usual disheveled people scavenging around the separate recycle bins in the airport, you had perfectly ordinary looking people poking around inside the bins also. Anyone know why this is so?
posted by spyke23 to travel & transportation (16 comments total)

Well...
I would say that poor people looking for thrown away food or refundable empty soda cans or bottles do not necessarily have to dress in rags.
As far as I know there is no law anywhere in the world that demands to follow a certain dresscode in order to make yourself recognisable as poor.
posted by ollsen at 3:36 AM on August 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

It may be because a lot of plastic bottles in Germany now have a deposit on them. Most tourists/travelers don't care about getting there deposit back and chuck it in the bin. Since the deposit can be quite a lot (around 20Cent), it makes it lucrative to many to go fishing the bottles.
posted by chillmost at 3:48 AM on August 2, 2007

it makes it lucrative to many to go fishing the bottles.

God, I wrote that just like a German would.

It makes it lucrative for many to go fishing the bottles out of the bin.
posted by chillmost at 3:50 AM on August 2, 2007

Not just plastic....glass too. A full case of empty bottles nets quite a healthy return.
posted by TomMelee at 4:44 AM on August 2, 2007

Don't they have the same liquid restrictions as almost any other airport? There's unopened booze in them thar hills.
posted by JJ86 at 5:46 AM on August 2, 2007

There are a lot of unemployed people in and around Berlin. A lot. And Germans tend to be finicky about recycling in the first place. So my guess is, they're just looking for bottles.

If you're drinking beer in a park, which is quite the summer leisure activity here, it's customary to just leave all the bottles in a pile. They'll get picked up within the hour by someone.
posted by creasy boy at 6:15 AM on August 2, 2007

The deposit for plastic bottles in germany is currently 25 euro-cents, that is about $0.33 (!). For a single (even small) bottle. Most tourists new to germany do not realize this and drop their bottles in the waste bins, so dumpster diving at the airport is well worth the effort for the unemployed or even students.
posted by Nightwind at 6:33 AM on August 2, 2007

I'm always fishing in the recycle bins at airports looking for a newspaper to read and I dress pretty normal.
posted by jessamyn at 6:47 AM on August 2, 2007

JJ86, I believe the US is the only country with liquid restrictions. Woo hoo!
posted by kimdog at 7:38 AM on August 2, 2007

kimdog, I believe you will find that it is not.
posted by grouse at 7:48 AM on August 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

kimdog said: JJ86, I believe the US is the only country with liquid restrictions. Woo hoo!

No. Remember where the whole liquid threat originated? The UK. Traveling throughout Spain and Brussels on European airlines recently I can assure you it is all over the continent. My GF also has lost some nice liquid purchases earlier in the year flying between Russia and Spain on non-US carriers.
posted by JJ86 at 7:50 AM on August 2, 2007

I have often noticed the same in France - namely well dressed folk poking around in waste bins. I assumed it was simply a cultural difference in regards to the activity (much like how I see well-dressed UK folk poking through skips aka dumpsters looking for scavenger items.)
posted by A189Nut at 10:24 AM on August 2, 2007

Ah, the Pfand ("pledge," or deposit). I practically lived off of bottle returns for a few weeks in Germany. Generally my own bottles from soda and beer that I drank, but it was the German equivalent of being really broke and going through your couch/piggy bank to buy more beer. Especially when a liter bottle of Coke gives you a 25 cent return and you can buy a half-liter of Sternburg for 42 cents, it's totally worth it.
posted by atomly at 10:32 AM on August 2, 2007

Oof, I stand corrected. I flew through Iceland into Amsterdam about 2 weeks after the liquid ban, and in those airports they had no restriction on flights other than those traveling to the US.
posted by kimdog at 10:32 AM on August 2, 2007

Can the random tourist get his deposit refunded? If so, how?
posted by Rash at 1:25 PM on August 2, 2007

@Rash: You just hand over the old empty bottle when you buy your next one :)
posted by yggdrasil at 10:15 PM on August 2, 2007