page_title: Container-deposit legislation
section_title: Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Container-deposit legislation / Container-deposit legislation by country / Europe / Germany
caption_attribution_description: Pfandrückgabeautomat bei Aldi Süd (Hersteller: Tomra), Standort: München
context_page_description: Container-deposit legislation is any law that requires the collection of a monetary deposit on beverage containers at the point of sale and/or the payment of refund value to the consumers. When the container is returned to an authorized redemption center, or retailer in some jurisdictions, the deposit is partly or fully refunded to the redeemer. It is a deposit-refund system.
  Governments may pass container deposit legislation for several reasons, including, for example:
  To encourage recycling and complement existing curbside recycling programs, to reduce energy and material usage for containers
  To specifically reduce beverage container litter along highways, in lakes and rivers, and on other public or private properties
  To extend the usable lifetime of taxpayer-funded landfills
  Deposits that are not redeemed are often kept by distributors or bottlers to cover the costs of the system or are escheated to the governmental entity involved to fund environmental programs.
context_section_description: In Germany, the deposit legislation covers plastic, aluminum, and glass containers for water, beer, mixed drinks containing beer, carbonated/non-carbonated soft drinks, and mixed alcoholic drinks. Excluded from the program are containers for fruit and vegetable juice, milk products, wine, spirits, liquors, and certain dietary drinks. Also excluded are containers smaller than 100 ml and larger than 3 l. 
  There is separate legislation (known as Einwegpfand or single-use deposit) for non-reusable containers, mostly plastic bottles and aluminium cans, distinct from (Mehrwegpfand reusable deposit) for reusable containers, mostly glass.
  A Einwegpfand deposit system was passed in 2002, and was implemented on 1 January 2003. However, its implementation was fought by lobby groups of German bottling industry and retailers. This fight also included trials at the Federal Administrative Court of Germany and the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, but all trials were won by the German federal government. 
  The deposit charge for Einwegpfand containers is required to be relatively high. As of October 2016, the standard deposit for these is €0.25. By comparison, the deposit for reusable containers (mostly glass bottles) is usually between 8 and 15 cents. The usual rates are locally €0.02 for some wine bottles, €0.08 for beer bottles up to 0.5 L, and €0.15 for beer bottles with flip-top closures, beer bottles over 0.5 L and other bottles (mostly water and soft-drinks, lesser fruit drinks, milk, cream, yoghurt). Some bottles have an even higher deposit. Bottle crates have a deposit of €1.50. 
  The reasoning behind the price discrepancy was to keep environmentally-harmful plastics from ending up as litter or in the regular garbage system. It was also meant to make non-reusable beverage containers more expensive and thus, less attractive.
  Retailers are only obliged to take back the material fractions that they sell. The deposit for refillable bottles is not defined by law. Germany's collection system is 80% automated and 20% manual. Most supermarkets in Germany have a reverse vending machine that is designed to be used by customers and which scans "Pfand" returns and prints a receipt for the total value of the refund which can be exchanged for cash or put towards the cost of future purchases.
  Supermarkets near the Danish border have established a scheme, where Scandinavian residents are exempt from "Pfand", by signing an "Export declaration" and providing that cans are exported within 24 hours and the contents are not consumed within Germany.
  The system has successfully encouraged the recycling of Einwegpfand containers. Between 97 and 99% of non-reusable bottles are returned, and recycling rates for cans are around 99%. On the other hand, the percentage of containers being sold that are reusable has actually decreased from about 80% to below 50% since the system was established.  Since manufacturers keep the deposit on any unreturned containers, they are effectively incentivized to produce Einwegpfand containers which yield a higher profit if they are not returned. One estimate suggests they have earned €3bn on unreturned bottles since the system was introduced.
  At any given time, an estimated 2 billion beer bottles are in circulation in Germany, each of which sees an average of 36 reuses.
caption: Reverse vending machine in an Aldi supermarket in Germany.
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