Deposit

On 1st January 2003, Germany introduced a deposit system on all one-way (non returnable) drink containers with the exception of milk, wine, spirits and non sparkling soft drinks.

Many soft drinks and beers were traditionally sold in glass bottles which had a deposit but the increase in plastic and can packaging was leading to enormous amounts of rubbish, much of it lying around and thrown out of car windows.

There was a large outcry when the new system came in to force and the system went through some teething problems but since 2006, the system seems to work and is now taken for granted and even has resulted in a good source of income for some on hard times. In the large cities and around events, many can't be bothered to return the bottles/cans and leave them for others to collect up and get the deposit money. A sort of charity donation! Interesting though that unlike earlier times when the cans were crunched up or the bottles thrown in unaccessible places, they are very often neatly stacked around a rubbish bin or on a wall for the "collectors" to find.

It has certainly done a tremendous amount to reduce the "wild rubbish" BUT it has done nothing to reverse the trend in one-way packaging, in fact the opposite! The tin and plastic packaging is much lighter and easier to handle and now everyone is used to starting their trip to the supermarket with a few carrier bags full of plastic bottles (all packaging can be returned to any shop, regardless of where it was purchased).

While not a 100% solution it has, in my opinion, been a good step for the countryside. Today while strimming around the edges of one horse field that is alongside a road, I came acroos the shattered wine bottle thrown out of a car. Not sure why wine & spirits excluded from the deposit system, no doubt they have a good lobby or one thought that the excise duty imposed on sparkling wine in 1902 to pay for the Kaiser' battle fleet, was enough penalty.

Annoying but a fact of life. More worrying at the moment is the horse molestor(s) that have been very active in the area for the last six months. A good friend, Kathi, who has also been Bliped in the past, had her horse attacked and injured with lots of knife cuts recently.