Germans Scrap Bill on Deposits for Recyclables

Germans may be champions of recycling, but the upper house of parliament Friday dumped a bill that would have imposed a high deposit on disposable beverage bottles and cans.

The hard-fought battle to apply a deposit of 22 cents on every 12-ounce can and 44 cents for larger containers was a pet project of Environment Minister Juergen Trittin. It had the support of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and much of the country.

The legislation was approved by the lower house, or Bundestag, but failed to win the majority needed to even bring it up for a vote in the upper house. That was a harsh blow to a government that has embraced green virtues, from renouncing nuclear-power production to rescuing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol reached in Japan to fight global warming.

Some drinking containers here already were subject to deposits. But new deposits were intended to force industries to recycle more of their beverage containers and to encourage cleanup of parks and fields by children and the homeless hunting for cans and bottles for the deposit.

Industries producing soft drinks, beer, glass bottles and aluminum cans were staunchly opposed to the measure because they would have been forced to invest $1.2 billion to retool production, vending machines and distribution systems. The boost in beverage prices, even though refundable, would have hit consumers in their pocketbooks at a time when food prices are already rising because of high energy costs and the last year’s rash of livestock diseases.

Still, in a country where kitchens have at least half a dozen receptacles for sorting trash--clear glass, colored glass, paper, metal and plastic, compost and the rest--the necessity of returning containers to reclaim deposits would likely have been taken in stride.

For more than a decade, German manufacturers have been required by law to pay for the recycling of their product packaging. Most do so through a nonprofit, industry-owned collection network. Producers provide about $2 billion a year to fund it.

Some items that are considered particularly harmful to the environment, such as batteries and printer ink cartridges, come with postage-paid mailing envelopes for returning the used items for proper disposal.

Sponsored by Trittin, whose environmentalist Greens party successfully pushed through the nuclear shutdown and an “ecology tax” boosting gasoline to $3.50 a gallon, the deposit law had been expected to pass until Germany’s most-populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, last week warned that it would vote against it.

The state is home to several of Germany’s biggest beer and soft-drink producers, as well as major supermarket chains that opposed the deposits because of the extra storage and handling burdens.

Bavaria also opposed the measure, despite support from the hundreds of small breweries in that state that already use returnable bottles to market their products. The small breweries hoped that the deposits would cut into the sales of competitors who mass-produce cheap beer and sell it in cans.

The Trittin bill had been expected to supplant legislation that passed years ago during then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s tenure but that has yet to take effect. That bill, which imposes fines on producers who fail to package at least 72% of their product in reusable containers, will be implemented next summer. The revenue is to be used for litter collection.

Germany’s powerful Federal Consumers Assn. lamented the decision in the upper house, the Bundesrat, warning that the use of disposable containers will continue to rise and the extra costs passed on to consumers.