Brewers offering cash for empty bottles spark unexpected 'beer bottle tourism'
Published date: Wed, 26 Feb 2025 22:16:21 +0700A brewery eco plan to encourage beer fans to bring back bottles for cash has backfired - after they have been flooded with returns from foreign drinkers.
Brewers in Austria have been offering EUR 3.90 (GBP 3.23) for a crate of returned beer bottles, more than anyone in Europe.
Now it has emerged that they have been overwhelmed by drinkers from the eight countries on their border keen to cash in.
That includes one beer and wine lover, seen in the video, returning dozens of empty bottles to his local machine in Vienna.
He said: 'I didn't need any extra motivation to drink more. But this offer makes getting through a few bottles of beer at night all the more enjoyable.
'I hope that vineyards introduce a similar scheme.'
Organisers said the biggest returns have come from Germany, which pays drinkers half what they can get in Austria.
Florian Berger from Austria's Brewers' Association explained: 'The goal was to increase the motivation to return bottles.'
The deposit increase was originally intended to boost returns in Austria as up to six per cent of beer bottles end up in waste or are dumped as litter every year.
But an unexpected hitch came when brewers could not tell the difference between beer sold in Austria or by its neighbours.
Schonramer Brewery in Bavaria spokesman Christian Thiel said: 'Some people are trying to profit – at the expense of breweries and retailers.'
In one notorious case an entire trailer full of empties was rolled across the border from Germany.
Austria is surrounded by eight countries and only Germany and Hungary currently pay any deposit at all on glass bottles.
Details
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Vienna, Austria |
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25/02/2025 |
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Partner Agency |
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VRP162189 |
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Duration: 01:45 |
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Rating: News safe |
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recycling beer bottles beer bottles glass bottles Schonramer Brewery brewery |
