How breweries are undermining their reusable system

There are no more recent studies, but industry experts assume that the transport routes have become longer rather than shorter since then. At the expense of the environment, a bottle puzzle has become independent, which is now even making it more difficult to supply beer bottles. It could easily be simplified if the breweries only wanted to.

Because the beer bottle is actually the model student on the drinks shelf. Around 80 percent of beer in this country is filled in returnable glass bottles. While empty wine bottles usually shatter in glass containers and non-returnable PET bottles are shredded into plastic chips, beer bottles can be refilled 30 to 50 times.

Breweries used to share bottles

In the 1970s, when there were only three television programs and about as many types of beer bottles in West Germany, the system also worked. Almost all breweries used a common pool of bottles.

They cleaned the empty bottles that came to them, regardless of which brewery they originally came from, put their labels on them and filled them with fresh beer. Stubbi, NRW and Euro bottles were the three standard types up until the 1990s.

But now there are more than 100 types of bottles. They have long been more than just a transport good that is shared with the competition in solidarity. Since the turn of the millennium, more and more breweries have been selling their beer in elaborately designed bottles.

The color spectrum ranges from blue to white to green to brown. Desperados is offered in exotic, bulbous 0.66 liter bottles, small breweries play with 0.25 liter clear glass bottles. The most unusual formats and designs are honored with a design award.

The biggest sorting problem here are standard bottles with individual embossing: Krombacher, Warsteiner, Veltins, Bitburger and Radeberger, Germany’s largest Pils producers, now decorate the neck with their name or brand slogan. Several hundred million bottles with individual relief embossing are in circulation throughout Germany. Every one of them has to go back to the manufacturer, no other brewery can do anything with the so-called individual bottle.

>> Read here: The individual embossing of bottles causes problems for regional breweries and the environment

The bottle as a personalized advertising medium binds customers to the brand – that is the interpretation of the industry giants. But there is another reason for the individualization trend: large breweries have recently complained again and again about feeding new glass bottles into the reusable system, while smaller companies as free riders refilled the bottles round after round without replacing the worn bottles.

“Anyone who invests in individual empties ensures that they always come back to them,” says Holger Eichele from the German Brewers’ Association, which brings together the interests of small and large breweries.

Georg Hagemeister in Rosenheim shows what excesses the individualization trend is taking on. Around a million liters of beer are bottled at Auerbräu every week. That is around ten percent of the total turnover of the Paulaner brewery group, to which the Rosenheimers belong.

With a panorama of the Alps in the background, pallets of third-party empties pile up in the yard, each stack as high as a family home. Hagemeister pulls his flat cap lower over his face and lights his pipe: “Since Kasperl wrote their names on the bottles, the chaos has only gotten worse.”

Employees sort out foreign bottles

Working in two shifts – from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. – at least two employees stand at the assembly line and pull the “Kladderadatsch” out of circulation. In front of them, the beer crates run down the conveyor belt of the sorting system, which sounds an alarm when it discovers empties from third parties. People help out where the machine is overwhelmed. And she is often overwhelmed, choking on the quantities of third-party empties.

Just four types of bottles are filled at Auerbräu. “Ten to 30 percent of the bottles delivered are unusable for us. The rate fluctuates, but has increased significantly in recent years,” says Hagemeister.

More than 20,000 bottles of empties leave the yard in Rosenheim every week. They then make a stopover in Munich, where they are sorted by bottle type by an empties buyer and driven back to the breweries.

Melting bottles is forbidden

In order to understand the origin of the confusion, it is worth taking a look at the beginning of the multi-way chain. Once swallowed by the deposit machine, the individual beer bottles are sorted into crates in the beverage store: quickly, in disorder, Krombacher next to Paulaner, a bottle of Flensburger quickly wedged in between.

In the worst case, nothing fits together. Very few customers bring back completely complete, unmixed crates. Forwarders then drive the (mixing) crates back to the breweries, where the sorting work really begins.

Across Germany, the number of misdirected bottles is said to be well over a billion a year. No one keeps statistics that accurate.

Just throwing away is not an option despite the sorting and transport effort. On the one hand, the legislator prohibits the destruction of returnable glass bottles in perfect condition. On the other hand, the manufacturing costs for beer bottles have been increasing for years. Last but not least, because energy and sand are becoming more and more expensive, the purchase price per glass bottle is ten to twelve cents – and thus above the deposit value of eight cents.

This development was exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. The particularly energy-intensive glass industry is struggling with high electricity and gas prices, and new glass production has become extremely unprofitable in recent months. “Those who don’t have long-term supply contracts currently have to pay 80 to 90 percent more for new glass beer bottles than they did a year ago,” says Eichele from the German Brewers’ Association.

In summer, at the peak of the barbecue and festival season, some breweries fear bottle shortages. “The longer the hot weather lasts, the more difficult the empties situation can become,” says Eichele. His appeal: Enjoy the beer, finish the bottle – and then quickly bring the empties back to the deposit machine. Above all, smaller breweries with a manageable pool of bottles are dependent on having their glass stock back in the bottling plant quickly.

With an estimated four billion beer bottles moving back and forth between breweries and consumers across Germany, the bottle shortage will not break out overnight. But beer is getting more expensive, and the clutter of bottles is also contributing to this. The biggest pilsner brands increased their prices by around ten percent in the spring.

The corona crisis has already hit the brewing industry, there is currently a lack of truck drivers, and some haulage companies no longer serve individual routes due to the high fuel prices. It would help enormously if not so many empty bottles were driven through Germany and the sorting effort was not so great.

“Ever since Kasperl put their names on the bottles, the chaos has only gotten worse.” Georg Hagemeister, master brewer in Rosenheim

At Veltins in Sauerland, the workforce had to line up for sorting at weekends in three shifts for years, fishing underwear and an average of two boxes of bunches of keys out of the empties every year. Ulrich Biene, Head of Press and Public Relations, remembers that “at some point we couldn’t manage the bottle quantities anymore”.

In 2005, Veltins invested more than 20 million euros in a fully automatic sorting system. Since then, pneumatic gripper arms have been grabbing individual crates, and ten cameras are measuring the bottles. Up to three million bottles are sorted every day. Veltins has concluded barter agreements with the other major breweries: truckloads of Krombacher for truckloads of Veltins.

Breweries want to share more bottles

The manufacturers have recognized the absurd excesses that the individualization trend has assumed and are working on a solution: Back to the 70s. Jointly maintained bottle pools, which as many breweries as possible have access to, should keep transport routes short and reduce the sorting work for everyone.

When it comes to the exact implementation of such a pool, however, there is no consensus. The market leaders Krombacher, Warsteiner, Radeberger and Bitburger joined forces in autumn 2021 to launch a standardized Pilsner bottle.

The initiative provides clear rules of the game as to who contributes when and what percentage of new glass. However, smaller breweries felt patronized and are now working on establishing a cooperative model for pool bottles.

Attempts to combine both initiatives have failed. Auerbräu is monitoring the efforts, but does not want to join any pool model for the time being. Veltins is also not a member of either of the two pool systems.

In any case, now is not a good time to invest in joint bottles, the price of which is currently being pushed up by the war in Ukraine. “In view of the explosion in costs, pool membership is not on the agenda,” says Veltins press chief Biene.

One country, one beer bottle: that remains an illusion for the time being. For the foreseeable future there will continue to be a collection of bottles. The simplest way to limit bottle tourism and make the sip from the bottle more sustainable is for the consumer anyway: “Anyone who buys regional beer and returns the empty bottles in the region avoids long journeys,” says Thomas Fischer from Deutsche environmental aid.

Or just buy a whole barrel of beer. There are significantly fewer than 100 designs.

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