It’s finally over. Germany’s retailers and the drinks industry’s last ditch effort to stop the introduction of deposits on non-refillable containers on January 1, 2003 has failed. On Friday, 22 breweries, a supermarket chain and two can manufacturers lost the most recent appeal to the country’s highest court to declare the new regulations unconstitutional.

In the new year consumers will have to pay a 25 cent deposit on all single-use containers for drinks with carbonation; larger containers will cost 50 cents. That includes soft drinks, beer and fizzy mineral waters, while wine, champagne, spirits, fruit juices and milk in one-way packaging are still deposit-free.

Advocates of environmental protection have cheered the new regulations and the numerous court decisions that have declared retailers’ and drinks producers’ gripes irrelevant.

After the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a plea to stop introduction of the rules on December 20, leading retailers and breweries finally sat down with Environmental Minister Jürgen Trittin to address how to deal with the new deposit system and hammered out a agreement.

Concessions

The agreement says that, from the new year, consumers will only be able to get back their deposits for single-use bottles, beer cans and cartons from the place they bought them. By October 1, 2003 though, a nationwide collection system will be in operation. Then people will be able to return one-way bottles and cans to any shop that sells them.

Opponents of the new “can deposit” say that the system will bring chaos and, according to the German Brewers Association, 20,000 jobs will be lost. The German Retailers Association figures that setting up the return system will cost €1.4 million and that yearly running costs will come to €750 million. Retailers can’t afford not to cooperate though – shops that refuse to take back one-way containers could be fined up to €50,000 ($52,000).

Holding out

If chaos does break out, retailers and drinks producers will be to thank for it. They’ve had nine months to prepare for the new deposit system, says Federal Environmental Agency president, Andreas Troge. “It is a serious failure from the business community that there still isn’t a national return system,” he added. The industry was banking on being successful in court.

Discount supermarkets have responded to the new rules by striking one-way bottles and cans from their inventories and fobbing off what they still have for up to 50 percent less than normal to empty their stockrooms. At a Lidl supermarket in central Berlin, shoppers cleared the shelves of the beer that was on sale within a few hours last Saturday.

Twelve years ago

The retailers and industry have brought it upon themselves though. In 1991 former Environmental Minister Klaus Töpfer introduced the packaging regulation, which calls for penalizing drinks producers with a forced deposit on one-way containers if the amount of refillable bottles on the market goes below 72 percent.

While one-way bottles or cans end up in a recycling shredder or at the dump, refillable bottles can be reused up to 50 times. Federal Environmental Agency president, Andreas Troge, contends that a can causes four times as much greenhouse gases as a reusable bottle. With four billion cans in circulation in Germany, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Germany already has a well-developed national collection system for refillable bottles.