Oregon Launches First Statewide Refillable Bottle System in U.S.

Any Oregon peeps actually encountered these reusable bottles yet? I'd like to hear some experiential tales. Seems like a good idea and it has to (re)start somewhere so hopefully more states/breweries will follow suit and we can build a critical mass that is necessary for a system like this to realize actual savings, economic or ecological.

 

Just thinking about this whole topic and my other question that comes to mind is: Do craft breweries use that much glass to begin with? Everyone I go to sells cans? Very little glass, only special beers and limited items, but I would wager 90% is can?
So with that said, would it not be best for Big Beer to use a system like this? They seem to be the largest user of bottles?
Just my 2 cents, I have zero facts so this is just based on assumptions.

 

The large craft breweries Sam Adams, Sierra Nevada, Stone ect, use a lot of glass. That said they are also are moving to cans.

 

Homeless people dig that deposit. Keeps things cleaned up a little...My buddy's retired dad used to ride around on his bike and pick em up. Pretty good system for us I think.

 

And those with free access to a mail truck......

I really don't know why all states don't go to a deposit system. I went to college in NY and it was simple. You put your empties back in the case, and take it back to the beverage store when you buy more beer.

 

I was really taken aback on my first trip to the western US back in 1984. So much natural beauty, and so much roadside trash. The $0.10 in MI had eliminated the trash.

 

I doubt you would think that way if you owned a beverage store.

 

Most breweries that can also, probably mostly, bottle. Go look in the stores, what percentage of glass vs cans do you see? Cans are growing, but glass still has a sizeable lead.

 

The number of times a bottle was reused in the US, as I recall, averaged something like 8 times (I think I got that from a large sign in a Pabst bottling shop?).

Wear rings around the base and at the shoulder were pretty obvious on some bottles, as were the occasional "chewed-up" looking (and feeling!) lip under the crown.

US bottles typically were dated with a two-digit year embossed into the base of the bottle along with other mfg's logo ("Owens Illinois - Duraglas" in this case) and other coding.
Green 7 oz. bottle, made in 1964 (used last for Ballantine XXX Ale).

(Well, they still are, but it's typically around the bottom of the bottle these days).

Wasn't unusual to find some pretty old bottles in cases of refillables- but the year of manufacture didn't really help with how many times it'd have been reused (some empties obviously sat for a long time in the garage or cellar) but probably gave the brewer some idea, along with those wear marks.

From the stats I've seen over the past few years, bottles are still the primary package for "craft" beer (2016 stats from the B.A. put it them at 17.2% - 2017 they said "30.9% of packaged volume ~18 share of overall craft production" (including draught).

But cans were still #1 for the industry as a whole, although they did peak in the early '90s.
1991
Cans = 60%
T/A Bottles =24%
Draught = 11%
Refillable bottles = 5%

2016 (Domestic brewers only*)
Bottles = 22.8%
Cans = 51.9%
Draught = 9.2%

* Doesn't add up to 100% because imports aren't included.

---Beer Institute figures

 

My guess is the availability of portable canning lines and crowler packaging has dramatically changed the packaging choices of the newer breweries here in MN (going by looking in the stores, as you suggest, so not at all based on real data). It is mostly the old guard (and specialty beers) that predominately bottle. (And one of our old guard - Summit - is probably mostly canning these days based on the same no-data observation; leaving only Schell's with few beers in cans.)

 

Mental musings.... So, I understand one of the major difficulties of returnable bottles is returning the bottles. For consumers it has be convenient and with incentives (like a return deposit). Stores and distributors don't want to dedicate time and space to managing returnable bottles that makes them little to no money. Like @dennis3951 said to this...

Solution: Automated returnable bottle kiosks. Place the kiosks outside beer stores/distributors. Customers load their empties into the kiosk, the kiosk counts the bottles, bottles go into an attached locked bin, and the machine gives the customer a receipt showing the deposit amount at the end. The customer takes the receipt into the store for a credit on their next purchase. A collection truck periodically picks up the bottles from the kiosk bin. It's convenient, customers have an incentive (deposit), the store/distributor doesn't have to manage/store empty bottles, and bottle pick up is easy. Basically, like a Coinstar machine at a grocery store, but for bottles.

 

Not sure how much of an incentive getting the deposit back really is - it's the customer's money in the first place and that's always been a standard part of any deposit system. And in many cases (such as Straub's experience) it's failed to get their bottles returned in adequate quantities.

Altho, according to the OP's story:

Having lived in mandatory deposit states, not sure the 24¢ extra is gonna do it.

Where you around during the era when PA's distributors were selling a lot of beer in deposit bottles? The parking lots were constantly full of cars unloading cases of empties, taking the handtrucks into the building where the cases were then stacked on a pallet or put on rollers and customers given tokens for the (at the time) $1.50 credit.

I would routinely bring back 3-5 cases of empties. I sure wouldn't want to wait in line for the people ahead of me bringing back multiple cases of beer, and then insert 72 - 120 bottles one at a time into some machine (it'd have to be some pretty big machine!)

Plus, what does one do with the empty, returnable/reusable case? The original deposit was on both the bottles AND the case. (In NJ, where it was $1/case - it was 2¢ a bottle, 52¢ for the "shell". Not sure how PA broke it down when they went to a buck and a half).

 

I hate the waste of buying beer in bottles knowing the ridiculous amount of reprocessing that "recycling" creates. Back when I was a kid, all I knew was beer (and pop/soda) in returnable bottles. We hadn't quite caught on to the throw-away culture yet. I wish we'd go back.

 

Having also lived for a while in a mandatory deposit state, it really doesn't matter if the customer returns the empty, because if he doesn't, someone else will. I've seen people go though garbage cans, dumpsters, and, of course, along the roads and highways picking out / up empties to return. When the program first went into effect, there were even youth groups (e.g. Boy Scouts) who were scouring the roadsides as a fund raiser.

 

Those exact machines existed (and I assume still do?) when I lived in New York 15+ years ago. You took cases of beer bottles back to the beer store, but the Price Chopper grocery store had those machines for people to return their soda cans and 2L bottles.

 

Prior to this statewide program, Double Mountain began using refillables that could be returned to point of purchase, independent of the recycling system in place. Nice start but not scalable beyond a few breweries. Now, the refillable bottles get taken to the recycling center with the other bottles and cans and are separated by them. From my perspective it’s zero extra effort and I hope more bottling breweries sign on, all the moreso if it accelerates the trend of breweries moving from 22oz to 500ml (I don’t like 22s).

 

Yeah we have those machines here in MA, although unlike Ranbot's example of being able to load in a case and have the machine sort it out you have to slot them in one by one. Plus, as you allude to, they generally only accept items that are sold by the store they're associated with (e.g. the ones outside the grocery store don't accept beer cans, or store brand soda from other stores). So it's actually kind of a pain and you really have to be committed to that 5 cents to bother since we also have curbside recycling here.

When I was in High School in the 80s I actually worked at a dedicated, privately owned, redemption center that did nothing but accept bottles and cans and sell soda. It was always mobbed and the owner would accept anything, regardless of condition, so man did we have to sort through some disgusting stuff! I'm not sure what changed but those died out in the 90s for whatever reason (maybe the onset of curbside recycling?).

Anyway, nowadays when the average middle class family hires somebody else to mow their lawns and plow their driveways and is used to just putting recyclables on the curb, I can't help but think it would be a tough sell to entice enough people to go to the bother of returning refillable bottles.

 

Moving to Bend, OR, in November and excited about this program!

 

Hope it comes to NC.

In a few years, I could supplement my retirement picking up old ones. Now if they would just put deposits on cans here so they don't end up on the side of the road (and would also help with retirement).

 

Some places have replaced the bottling line with canning lines.