I bough two glass bottles of juice. One was with deposit (“pfand”) and one without. I’m curious, what’s the difference between them? I even asked my German neighbor — he doesn’t know. Reddit, maybe you can help me?:)

by iamopposite

4 comments

  1. The difference is that you paid a deposit for one, but not the other.

  2. I worked in a drink section for a supermarket some time ago. My supposition is that the left bottle is without “pfand” because it is not a standard bottle but rather a “custom” bottle wich the “mosterei” used for this batch of drinks. The bottle on the right is a standard format wich gets used by other companies as well so it has pfand and gets reused.

  3. The glass bottles with Pfand have standardized shapes. The one on the right is a standard juice bottle, the one on the left is some custom stuff.

    You’ll notice that Pfand bottles all come in the same set of shapes. That goes for water, juice, beer and milk bottles.

    The big glass bottles with Pfand also always have it embossed in the glass itself, so that they can remove the paper labels and then reuse them. Notice the lettering on the right just above the label. An additional hint are the whitish scratchmarks on the bottle. That’s were they bounce an roll on in the machines.

    And as always there are some exceptions here and there, but this is how it works in general.

  4. There are two completely separate *Pfand* systems: The “Rapp’s” bottle is *Mehrweg*. It gets cleaned, re-filled, and re-labelled. The “Possmann” bottle is *Einweg*. It gets smelted into new glass products.

    The *Mehrweg* system is very old, and not governed by any law. It is just a convenient system by the drinks industry to avoid having to constantly buy/produce new bottles when re-using the existing bottles is cheaper and more convenient — and *happens* to be more environmentally friendly more or less as a lucky coincidence.

    The *Einweg* system of charging a deposit for *non-reusable* bottles is far more recent, and was introduced by law. That law requires Pfand for single-use *glass* bottles only when they contain beer or carbonated soft drinks, but not juice, milk, wine, or spirits — whereas plastic bottles are subject to Einweg-Pfand even for juice and milk.

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