What do you mean by recycling? Melting down the bottles to make “new” glass? That’s extremely energy intensive, compared to just cleaning and refilling, which is what is done to deposit bottles (at least here in Germany)
The US doesn't use that much glass compared to aluminum and plastic. Aluminum recycling is very efficient which is why recycling centers really want it and refilling aluminum cans doesn't work well compared to glass because they deform and crumple a lot. Recycling aluminum takes about 5% of the energy of creating new aluminum.
By removing aluminum cans from curbside recycling, they're just adding additional steps and labor to recycling the cans.
Looking into the German system, it's really just glass bottles that can be refilled. Glass bottles are pretty uncommon in the US except for beer (and even with beer, I find cans way more common). You're definitely right that recycling centers aren't looking for glass (probably because it's energy intensive), but they are really looking for aluminum (because it's so easy to recycle).
The number of re-used bottles is down 30% in Germany in the decade after the bottle deposit scheme was created in Germany. Almost all bottles are getting returned (97-99%), but stores have been moving away from refillable glass bottles.
Yep, cleaning and refilling is great for glass, but glass is pretty uncommon in the US. Their use is steadily declining in Germany too and less than half are re-usable today. That might mean that it still makes sense to run this in Germany, but does it make sense to have a deposit for non-reusable bottles?
Whether an aluminum can goes into curbside recycling or is returned to a store for a deposit doesn't make much of a difference - it's going to be made into recycled aluminum. A glass bottle might be simply cleaned and refilled. So, we don't care where an aluminum can goes as long as it's recycled. We do care that a glass bottle is returned. So it makes sense to maybe put a 15 cent deposit on the glass bottle that can be redeemed while it might make sense to simply put a 5 cent tax on the aluminum can which you can't get back.
But some of this is culturally relative. Some places have big problems with people littering bottles and cans. A bottle deposit means that people won't just throw the bottle on the ground - or if they do, someone else will collect it for the deposit. The Irish plastic bag fee helps the environment because it got people to stop using so many plastic bags, but one of the most visible differences is the lack of plastic bag litter all over town.
Given Germany's high level of re-usable bottles, the return scheme probably makes more sense there. Articles also indicate that there may have been problems with bottle litter of non-reusable bottles and the deposit gives people an incentive to redeem the bottles (even if they're collected by Pfandsammler rather than the original owner). However, given the US' low rate of refillable glass, it seems to make less sense here. At least in my area of the States, it's illegal to drink alcohol in public and soda is the only other item with a bottle deposit. Seltzer, sports drinks, bottled water, etc. don't have a deposit. Still, we don't have a lot of cans and bottles becoming litter so we aren't as worried about that. As such, it seems more worthwhile to have the aluminum recycled efficiently via curbside pickup rather than individual transported, counted, etc. just to end up with the same fate.
One big thing is that, at least from anecdotal experience, the bottle or metal deposits are dedicated to bottles and metal cans, and so theyre pretty clean. People in the US are bad at not contaminating their normal recycling, which is part of why China stopped accepting imports of US recycling.
The glass bottle plant in my home town in the 60's did melt them down. Back then you could get the deposit back by taking the bottle into the store. And the plant had tours which showed the recycling operation to us school kids.
This doesn't mean that it makes economic sense to do the same thing 50 years on.
That's not what's done when you deposit bottles in most automated "reverse-vending" machines in the US, it gets crushed/shredded then recycled off-site
That being said, this article shows the German version of that, and it looks identical:
The action described also seems identical the the US version:
>Almost all German supermarkets have sophisticated “reverse vending machines” that will weigh and scan your bottle to match against a list of acceptable shapes and sizes.
>If your bottle is not on the retailer’s list, the machine spits the container back at you. If it matches, the bottle goes down a chute for either recycling or shredding, and the machine hands you a voucher with the added-up Pfand that you can then cash in at the till.
Germany has separate deposit systems for refillable and single use containers. Deposits for refillable bottles exist for both glass and a form of heavy duty reusable plastic. It is entirely unregulated but has nonetheless evolved to a high level of standardization. Most refillable glass bottles are one of a few standard shapes so it's rare to get a bottle rejected (all the branding is on single-use paper labels). Refillable glass is mostly the realm of local brands that have been doing it for decades, refillable plastic is limited to big brands like those of the Coca Cola Company.
The deposit for single use on the other hand is mandatory (intended primarily to remove the convenience disadvantage of refillables) and is the realm of discount and/or novelty beverages. It was only introduced somewhat recently (post 2k) which means that most supermarkets have separate reverse vending machines if they automate returns: those for refillable, which need a large storage area in the back for the big volume of whole bottles and crates and those for single-use which can be placed anywhere because the containers are crushed.
There's usually two types of reverse-vending machines in a German store: One that takes refillable bottles from glass or hard plastics to be brought back to the bottler, which have been part of a deposit system for ages, and another one for disposable plastic bottles, for which a deposit system has been started about 15 years ago. Those disposable bottles are shredded on site and brought to a recycling plant.
The first system makes ecological sense, the second one not so much (but it reduced litter for sure).
Well your second quote states that bottles are either recycled or not.
There are reusable and disposable plastic bottles. The disposable ones are of really thin plastic and crushed, yes. The reusable ones are put into crates and return to the factories so that they can be cleaned and refilled.
You can actually look through the machine and see the stacks of crates in the room behind them.
Many glas bottles (e.g. for beer, water and more) are reusable, too. They’re treated like reusable plastic bottles. Disposable glas does not have a deposit on it. You take those to a bottle bank (? containers on the street you throw them into), which is emptied once every two weeks (not too sure on the frequency).
Cans are the only type that is always crushed on return, afaik.
Here, have a random statistic - they talk about the decrease in percentage of beverages offered in reusable packaging:
https://de.statista.com/infografik/amp/8077/anteil-von-einwe...
It’s apparently “only” 42% for reusables, compared to 56% for disposable ones. It’s not perfect, but It’s better than what pretty much everybody else in the world is doing.
