APEAL believes that the 72 per cent reuse quota currently used in Germany should be replaced with a 90 per cent combined rate of reuse and recycling for all drinks packaging. This, says the association, is an ecologically and economically sound alternative to a system that has been met with enormous opposition from both consumers and industry.
According to the association, the majority of Germans want to see the one-way can deposit system scrapped. Over 75 per cent of consumers feel that one-way drinks packaging should be sorted for recycling at home, as was done until the end of 2002. The current system, which was introduced on 1 January 2003, means that consumers must return the can to the shop in which they purchased it.
"As a result, if you bought a container in Hamburg and went by train to Frankfurt, you couldn't return it," Rexam group communications director Per Erlandsson told FoodProductionDaily.com. "Customers can only return a container to the shop in which they bought it. As a result, many retailers have delisted one-way containers."
For consumers, the problem, it seems, is that there is no uniform return system for one-way packaging in Germany. According to APEAL, there are currently five different, incompatible systems covering 10 per cent of the drinks market at most.
The mandatory deposit on disposable drinks packaging has also been met by almost unanimous opposition from the packaging industry. APEAL claims that the system has cost a drop in industry turnover of €1.2 billion and a loss of €50 million in beer tax revenue.
"We lost 1.5 billion cans in Germany last year, and this impacted our profit by £18 million,". said Erlandsson."The recycling scheme in Germany has created chaos, and has hit cans more than any other form of packaging."In any case, over 85 per cent of cans in the waste stream are already recycled. We are pro-recycling - for example I think that the systems in Scandinavia work very well - but a scheme like this simply cannot be introduced without a collection system put in place."
In addition, industry argues that mandatory deposits lead to discrimiation and unequal treatment for different types of packaging. The system is also ambiguous - still soft drinks are not subject to deposits, while fizzy drinks are.
The EU is now scrutinising the system to see if it infringes European law. Packaging businesses argue that the current return systems make it impossible for foreign drinks manufacturers to export to Germany.