Free subject: the Pfand

 The Pfand is a kind of deposit that you have to pay on many bottles in Germany. This system works like this:

Pfandautomat or Leergutautomat

1. You buy a bottle and pay an additional amount of money between 8 and 25 cents per bottle
   
2. When the bottle is empty, you bring it back to the supermarket
3. Put it in the Pfandautomat or Leergutautomat
4. Get you coupon
5. Pay with it or cash your money out

There are two types of bottles:

Symbol on bottles

• Einwegflasche are the bottles and cans which are bad for the environment. The legislation forces the producers to put a Pfand on these bottles. So with this system, people are willing to bring it back to the shop instead of throwing them so they can't be recycled. For these containers, the amount of the Pfand is 25 cents.
• Mehrwegflasche, Mehrwegpfandflasche ou Leihflasche are the bottles that can be reused. For these one, there isn't any obligation for the producers and the shops to put a Pfand but it is more and more common because it is also benefic for the company because the bottles can be reused instead of being destroyed to produce a new one instead. For these bottles, the amount of the Pfand is between 8 and 15 cents. 

This implementation has many benefits on the society. In fact, many homeless people or retirees who doesn't earn enough money are living from this. That is the reason why it is really common in Germany to see people walking with big bags collecting bottles in the street mainly during some event such as sport games, cultural events...
Many people therefore leave thei
r bottles next to the been in the street instead of throwing it inside, for the "collecters" to pick them more easily.
As an other good consequence, the streets are really clean thanks to the Pfand system. As all this containers represent "free money".

Deutsche Pfandsystem GmbH is the company in charge of the system. But there are several criticism about this:

As the following article from Reporterre says, the objective to reduce the quantity of non-reusable bottles wasn't reach at all. Instead of that, this quantity increased a lot in recent years.

Moreover, there are suspicions about the way some bottles are recycled. It is said that many of the containers are simply thrown because of the huge amount of bottles and the lack of treating capacities of the company.