Bottle returns - international

August 7, 2013 11:30 PM

Does it make ecological sense to return glass bottles from Switzerland to Belgium for re-use?

I live in Switzerland and buy Belgian beer, the best beer in the world, in glass bottles from a store about a 30 minutes trainride away from where I live. The store charges a deposit on the bottles. When returning the bottles, they do give the deposit back but returning them is a hassle.

I am wondering whether, from an ecological perspective, it make more sense to forego the deposit and throw away the bottles in a local glass container or whether to return the bottles to the store and have them ship it to Belgium. My concern is that shipping heavy glass bottles all that distance may have a significant environment impact that outweighs any benefit of reusing the bottles. I am not even sure whether the store ships the bottles back to Belgium or whether they are just legally required to charge such a deposit.

posted by eurandom to Food & Drink (10 answers total)

They might not need to return the bottles to the source for reuse in order to recycle the glass. If the retailer is required by law to issue a deposit for every returned bottle that is from a brand they sell, it's totally possible that it's economically more feasible to sell the glass for local recycling to be made into new bottles. According to FEVE (the EU glass industry federation, so, you know, take cautiously), of 11 M tonnes of container glass collected in the EU in 2007, over 80% was used to make new containers, suggesting that cleaning-and-refilling isn't how the model works anymore.
posted by gingerest at 12:26 AM on August 8, 2013

I hope this is a long thread. I'm also confused by current set up for recycling.

I've heard that the only thing really worth recycling (as far as drink containers go) is metal. For glass and plastic, the energy cost in reuse/recycling is far more than conjuring a new container.

I'd be grateful if someone would tell me if that is true.
posted by converge at 2:14 AM on August 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

Depends on whether the bottles are the generic type of European beer bottles (which get stripped of their labels and re-used no matter where) or specific fancy Belgian Trappist-type of shapes.
In the first case the country where you deposit the bottles would not matter, in my understanding.

I would actually contact the manufacturer about this, and ask them what their preference is and how it computes, environmental-wise.
posted by Namlit at 4:45 AM on August 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

There's nothing ecological about using some sort of transportation method to haul a few pounds of glass into another country. You wouldn't even consider this if they didn't have a deposit program. Recycle it locally.
posted by oceanjesse at 5:48 AM on August 8, 2013

Are you sure they're mehrwegflaschen to begin with? You should ask the manager of the store what happens to the bottles, if you're really curious - perhaps their distributor sends the empty bottles back on the return trip for the truck that brought full bottles to Switzerland, in which case it's probably a positive thing for the environment for you to return them.

For glass and plastic, the energy cost in reuse/recycling is far more than conjuring a new container.

In Europe, when glass or plastic bottles are multi-use bottles, the energy cost is indeed lower, as the bottler just needs to sterilize the bottle and then apply a new label. The statistics I've seen are that the typical multi-use glass bottle in Germany is refilled 40-50 times (and I can believe that - I still occasionally buy fresh beer in bottles that were clearly manufactured for the World Cup in 2006), and the typical multi-use plastic bottle 25 times. Compared to manufacturing a new bottle each of those times, it certainly adds up.
posted by cmonkey at 8:18 AM on August 8, 2013 [4 favorites]

Have you asked the shop why they charge a deposit? Maybe there is some special reason.

In general, whether going out of your way to recycle is socially worthwhile depends on whether there is something is not properly priced in the market. That could be landfill, energy, particulate emissions, etc. All of these could be corrected (or created by, worsened or obfuscated) by various government programmes.
posted by hawthorne at 7:45 AM on August 9, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks for all the feedback. I will try to get some feedback from the store. It is a chain across Switzerland so I may need to contact their headquarters as I doubt the local store will know.

Most of the bottles are "fancy Belgian Trappist-type of shapes" and are specific for that manufacturer, such as Westmalle Tripel. I do expect that if the bottles are indeed shipped back, these bottles would be re-used after sterilization. The big question is whether the environmental damage from the transportation does not outweigh any re-use.
posted by eurandom at 10:22 PM on August 9, 2013

Right, I thought so.
It would actually be interesting to know what your store says.

I could imagine that if it's profitable for them to ship re-usable bottles home instead of manufacturing new ones that they have some kind of system to organize transport in doable ways (such as making use of empty trucks that anyway have to go or whatnot).

[Just as a point of comparison: the Swedish Systembolag, the (only) national wine and spirits seller, has drastically reduced return-bottles. Some of the bottles can be left at any store, but some of the foreign specialty beers can't. It drives me bonkers to throw bottles into the trash here that I know would make money in my home country]
posted by Namlit at 2:00 AM on August 10, 2013

Response by poster: I did ask at the store and they claim they do actually return the bottles. The person I asked seemed to think it was an odd question and was not interested in going into any discussion on whether that actually makes sense from an ecological perspective. I guess I will continue to return the bottles as it just doesn't feel right to throw fancy Belgian beer bottles in the glass container.
posted by eurandom at 10:27 PM on December 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

Probably they just load them onto the trucks that anyway return to the factory. I guess the trucks would run no matter what. And, as you say, they're fancy bottles, probably not the cheapest to manufacture, so it's clearly profitable the way they do. Sad that no one wanted to address the ecological angle…would have been interesting to know.
posted by Namlit at 4:01 AM on December 21, 2013