Well, 750 cc’s is a lot of beer, but they did have such a standard (in Canada at least) until the early '80s, when all the breweries used “stubby” 12-ounce (355 mL) bottles. I think Miller was the first brand that introduced a “long neck” bottle, and within 6 months, stubbies were history, and the recyclers were wailing fiercely that it made no sense to have to sort 16 different shapes of beer bottle. But they never went back.
Check out the Seinfeld episode where such a scheme was hatched by Neuman and Kramer. A classic. It all revolved around the fact that the New York deposit is 5 cents, while in Michigan its a dime.
It would not work to take soda cans from Wisconsin (no deposit) into Michigan, as the I believe the tops of the cans are different so they can be told appart. I think the cans in Michigan have a gold top lid. Ours are silver here.
As noted here:
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A misdemeanor. Ha! What is that? Just a fine. If you make 5 cents on each bottle, twenty bottles will get you a dollar. You just have to bring in an extra 20 bottles for each dollar of the fine.
I’d do it myself, but I don’t have a car; I have to take a bus or something. Which means I’d have to bring enough empties to cover the fare. . . Hmmm. . .
I gotta go. I need to check bus fares and buy large carry-on bag.
Nope. Most of them in Michigan here are silver-colored, too. And every can or bottle lists all of the deposit states, so they’re pretty much the same cans and bottles anywhere. The UPC is all that tells the difference, and it’d probably be a logistics nightmare for distributors to change the UPC for every deposit/no-deposit state.
Besides, even if the colors were different, all of the big stores have stinky, disgusting bottle return zones with automated machinery to count your returns. I honestly think some people use bottles as a savings account. It’s so DISGUSTING to wait in a line with people that have bags and bags of bottles and cans. I usually end up donating my piddly 24 beer bottles to the person in front of me, because (1) they probably need it more (2) my time is worth more than $2.40, and (3) the wash-sink is usually long-broken. Yuck!
I’d LOVE to see Michigan drop this STUPID deposit law. The Adopt-a-Highway has gotten popular here; the roads will stay clean.
Getting back the deposits on bottles in California is a real pain in the ass. Although judging from other peoples post not much more of a pain than other places. The places where you can redeem the money is not the stores that you purchased the bottles in but rather a recycling business. There are plenty of them but are people really going to save these bottles and cans for a few months to get $10 or $20 for them.
I certainly would not save up my garbage to haul to some dirty shop to wait for someone to count my bottles for a couple of bucks. Curbside recycling is much easier and people actually use it as apposed to just throwing the containers out instead of hauling them around and waiting in line for their $2.50. Pretty much everything on the list that we use in the gazpacho household gets recycled now that we have curbside recycling in my neighborhood.
People at sporting events seem to have a business cleaning up the parking lot after tailgate parties and taking the bottles and cans in for recycling. There are also people that do more or less the same at the beaches.
The deposits are really just an excuse to raise taxes without sounding like you are raising taxes.
So what would be more PC? Dong your own recycling to the store, or taking all your bottles, cans, etc, and setting them in a bag NEAR a dumpster where some guy w/a grocery cart can find them and get money he might actually need?
One of my business clients is a manager for a bottling plant in Appleton, Wisconsin. One day we were discusing the Seinfeld episode, and I asked if folks from Northern Wisconsin, where there is no deposit, could take cans to the Michigan Upper Peninsula and make some cash. He said that there was a difference in the cans to prevent that. That conversation was over 4 years ago, so I don’t recall exactly what the difference was, I thought it had to do with the color of the lid tops on the cans, but I may be wrong.
Nope, nothing at all to distinguish. The exact problem you describe is a concern to the state of Michigan. Some people that live near the border routinely bring there cans and bottles back to Michigan. This isn’t a concern due to defrauding the producers who have to buy back the cans and bottles, but it’s a concern to the coffers of the state, because unrefunded soft drink container deposits are given to the state. Thus, when someone from out of state returns a bottle or can in Michigan, they’re “stealing” from the state! According to the Detroit News, I’ve read that 98% of deposits are fulfilled. I couldn’t determine how much we sell in Michigan, but that 2% is enough for the state to worry about losing.
NOW, for some STUPID reason, the state’s also trying to pass a deposit on other containers as well, such as iced tea, Gatorade-type drinks, et al. Proponents argue that this is for beautification. Phah!
Uh, word 29 in my response should be “their.”
In Canada all drink containers are deposit, with the exception of milk containers. Tetra-pak deposits are being phased in. Here in Vancouver, most folks I know don’t lug them back to the store, they put them out (a day early) with the curbside recycling, and the shopping cart people pick over the boxes for returnable items. It works pretty well, and diverts a lot of material from the landfill.
Here in Manhattan we’re in “intensive” recycling and have bottle-deposit. Most supermarkets have several machines at the front for despositing different types of bottles, and often a homeless person busily depositing away.
Often, of course, the homeless person obtained the bottles by rifling through somebody’s carefully sorted recycling, which kinda defeats the purpose but at least for me it’s hard to get annoyed. They’re not exactly getting rich, and for several it keeps them from having to actually beg.
Now, n.b. that in New York we reclycle a lot, but sort it into a mere two bags: clear for paper and paper products (cardboard, magazines, envelopes, etc.) and blue for steel, aluminum, glass, and (some) plastics.
Note there are two kinds of “deposit” bottles.
The old fashioned kind (often called “bar bottles”) which are returned to the bottler/brewer washed, and reused.
The other kind are one-time-use bottles that the bottler or an intermediary crushes and recycles them (maybe) after refunding the deposit.
The bulk of “deposit” bottles used in MA are the one-use kind, so no worries about toxins that won’t wash out.
The bar bottles are commonly used by bars for a few of their beers, since the beer is cheaper that way (or used to be in the early 80’s when I worked for a Massachusetts beer and wine wholesaler) and the distributors truck is going to be making regular visits to pick up the “shell” (a deposit box) and the bottles, and empty barrels, and deliver new product. It is a pretty efficient system and would be more so if the bottles were standardized.
When I was in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany years ago, I found that most countries seem to use a standard size bottle, so it can be returned to any bottler, and that must make things much simpler. They seemed to use re-usable bottles much more frequently.
Of course, draft beer is much more environmentally friendly so buy your beer in 15.5 gallon containers or by the glass from someone who does.