Already from February 2: Deposit for returnable beer bottles increases from 9 to 20 cents

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A deposit system for disposable plastic bottles and cans was introduced in Austria at the turn of the year. Now something is also happening for returnable containers: the deposit of 9 cents per bottle, which has been in place for 40 years, is being raised to 20 cents, according to the Austrian Brewers’ Association. The “classic 0.5-litre beer bottle,” which makes up 90 percent of these returnable containers, will be most affected. The changeover will occur “in the night from 1 February to 2, 2025.”. The “Standard” recently reported on plans in this regard.

“This will significantly increase the motivation to return empty bottles to retailers, especially now that other containers have also recently become subject to a deposit,” emphasizes Karl Schwarz, Chairman of the Association of Breweries, in a press release. Returnable glass bottles are “refillable up to 40 times and therefore have an outstanding ecological balance for regional drinks such as beer.” In recent years, the return mentality has “significantly decreased”; the bottles have increasingly been disposed of in the bottle bank and are therefore missing from the reusable cycle, according to the association. “The low deposit apparently led to more and more people disposing of the bottles and thus preventing them from being recycled,” says Schwarz. This is bad for the environment and causes millions in losses for breweries and other drinks producers due to the missing bottles, which must be replaced.

Expect less new glass to be needed as a result.
“Before the currency changeover, the deposit was 1.2 shillings for many years. With the introduction of the euro, it became 9 cents per bottle,” says Schwarz. From 2 February, the new deposit of 20 cents per bottle will be charged on purchases and paid out again when empty bottles are returned. “We assume that the higher deposit will ensure that the return intervals are shortened,” Florian Berger, Managing Director of the Brewers’ Association, says in the press release. This, in turn, will “bring the urgently needed bottles back into circulation. “We also expect that less new glass will be needed as a result because we will get more of the bottles back. This saves a lot of resources in the very energy-intensive production of glass bottles,” says Karl Schwarz.