René Heiden took two glass yogurt pots off a store shelf and listed nearby supermarkets where he could return them once they were empty.
His Berlin grocery store eschews single-use packaging in favor of reusable containers, a waste-reducing model that is experiencing a renaissance in Germany. But getting it right is surprisingly difficult.
“You need a range of packaging to make it as convenient as possible for consumers,” Heiden said. For example, an oil bottle needs a narrow neck and a small spout to help it drip – “you’d never put yogurt in it”. Jams and spreads, on the other hand, work best in cylindrical jars that can be completely scraped off with a knife.
Germany has long been praised for its recycling capabilities, but its efforts in reusing packaging are perhaps even more impressive. Its three favorite drinks – beer, water and milk (arguably in that order) – are covered by a nationwide deposit scheme. Food companies are also beginning to embrace the supplement movement for other foods.
“I’m seeing more and more products using reusable packaging,” Heiden said. . “But I’ve also seen some producers try to expand but have to go back because the processing costs are too high.”
The problem Hayden and others are grappling with is too much trash, which is polluting waterways, killing wildlife and seeping into our organs as plastic breaks down into tiny particles. In 2021, the average German produced about eight times his body weight in waste: a whopping 651 kilograms, more than the average for all inhabitants of Europe except four countries. Germany produced 64% more plastic waste than it did twenty years ago, and most of it was burned.
But it’s not just a problem here. Europe’s packaging problem is growing as consumerism spreads and Asian countries close their ports to ships laden with Western junk. The EU has set targets to reduce packaging by 5%, 10% and 15% by 2030, 2035 and 2040 as part of efforts to stop hazardous waste clogging landfills or burning in incinerators.
Recycling is an option, but plastic recycling is a thorny and unresolved problem. Furthermore, since 2008, Europe’s waste hierarchy prioritizes prevention and reuse over recycling.
“The best packaging is the packaging you don’t produce,” says Nathan Dufour, director of the European Zero Waste campaign promoting reuse systems. If you need to use it – for example for hygiene reasons – “then the packaging needs to stay in circulation for as long as possible”.
Germany is ahead of many of its neighbors in bottle deposit schemes, in which customers pay more up front when making a purchase – whether it’s premium juice from an organic shop or cheap beer from an unlicensed – and then get a refund. When they return the empty glass. The bottles are thrown into supermarket “reverse vending machines” where they are transported, cleaned and refilled.
Behind the process lies a subtle alliance of companies that have agreed to standardize and share their packaging, some of which date back a long way. For example, the Milch Mehrweg Pool (“Milk Reuse Pool” or MMP) was initiated by the German dairy industry in the 1980s and formalized in the 1990s.
The process was not smooth sailing, and after 2008, the organization disbanded. The system continued to operate unregulated until 2022 when it was reactivated as the Mach Mehrweg Pool (“Make Reuse Pool”). Currently, efforts are being made to strengthen cooperation among members and improve efficiency. It has also expanded to include other food and beverages.
“Reusable systems are most effective if they can scale, if they are used in large numbers, if they are used in every region,” said Julia Klein, a former Siemens engineer who manages MMP. “Keeping it just in the dairy industry would limit its potential.”
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One of those customers is coffee retailer Truesday; its brown bottles are on the shelves of Hayden’s stores. The aim is to sell coffee beans at a “real price” – taking into account hidden costs and compensating for unavoidable losses. In order to reduce plastic waste, its founder Henning Reiche decided to sell coffee beans in MMP bottles, which he believed would also help with marketing. The brown glass protects the coffee beans from sunlight, but customers can still see the beans through it. “It’s a great symbol of the transparency we want to convey through pricing.”
MMP has little raw data on its environmental footprint – a problem Klein attributes to years of inactivity – but based on mineral water industry data it estimates that the bottles in the pool last an average of about 50 cycles.
Benefits of reuse pools include economies of scale and lower barriers to entry for newcomers. The standardized process means that all companies in the pool have access to the bottles, so “empty bottles” only need to be sent to the nearest buyer. This reduces transportation costs and emissions.
But there are costs. Glass bottles are heavier than single-use packaging, which increases emissions during transportation, and they can require expensive cleaning equipment that smaller companies lack. Heide, who runs Samariter Unverpackt, said they also need more time to process in-store – and the extra time adds up.
Countries lacking Germany’s bottle-handling infrastructure and returns culture may also find it difficult to set up such a system from scratch.
“I realized that for other European countries that were starting from scratch, it was a completely different story,” Klein said. Brands don’t know which labels and machinery to use, supermarkets don’t have space to stack crates, and consumers aren’t used to returning empty containers.
But she added that launching the new system has the opportunity to make it more efficient than Germany’s system.
“From an outside perspective, it doesn’t make much sense to bring dirty empty cans and bottles back to the supermarket,” Klein said. “In the long run, it makes more sense to pick up reusable packaging at home.”
