Germanys Pfand and 'The Big Score'

In Germany when you buy a drink from the supermarket, you pay the normal product price plus a 'pfand'. The 'pfand' is an additional charge (between 8 and 25 cents) per bottle and also for crates (1.50 Euro + per crate). The 'pfand' portion of the drinks charge is refunded to you when you bring your bottles back to the supermarket. The 'pfand' is a recycling initiative and it works - everyday you see people with sacks of empty bottles on the way to the supermarket to get their pfand back.

All medium to large supermarkets have a pfand machine where the bottles and crates are returned. These machines are like ATM's and are fully automatic, scanning the bottles are they are put in the machine and then giving you a docket once you have finished.

Once you have finished you either do your normal grocery shopping and the cashier will scan your docket which will take the value of your returned pfand off your total bill. If you want you can go directly to the cashier and get cash without buying anything.

Since moving to Germany we have been like the locals and carting all of our used bottles back to the supermarket on a regular basis. It is amazing how those bottles can add up when you have a 'do' at your house!

The other side of the pfand thing is that discarded bottles represent a currency that anyone on the street can take advantage of. In particular, homeless and disadvantaged people are always seen going through the bins or picking the bottles of the street. More industrious people target the local parks and clubs, knowing a lot of bottles are 'up for grabs; and come prepared with many bags and in some instances special trolleys. For instance once night while we were waiting for a club to open, a savvy pfand entrepreneur arrived at opening time with a huge flatbed trolley and many empty crates. A good idea, hang around the club areas, and as everyone arrives they will need to dump their 'roadies' before going inside.

So, leaving your bottles behind when out and about almost definitely means that someone will come along later and benefit from your waste. Everyone knows this, so if someone is begging on the street it is a valid donation, and gladly accepted to give them your empty bottle. If no one is around to take the empty - don't put the bottle in the bin, put it next to it as someone will be along shortly to pick it up and there is no need to make them go through the bins. Leaving your bottle behind is a social good.

Everyday pfands are sitting patiently on the street waiting to be picked up and we have found ourselves more and more inclined to start collecting them - particularly if we have a bag, are already on the way to return pfands or are near to home.

I've coined an acronym for my pfand hunting, 'HVPs' and that is I am on the lookout for 'High Value Pfands' - the ones that are worth 15 cents or above. I am now less likely to bypass a HVP!

So - on the evening of the Berlin International Beer Festival we could see a pfand paradise developing. We were out with friends and not going directly home at that point so we didn't collect any at the event. When we did go home however we started to pick up the pfands that were littering our street. In front of our place is a park and we went to have a brief look to see what pfands were hanging around. PFAND JACKPOT! 

At this park are a couple of concrete table tennis tables, and some people had obviously had a bit of a gathering around here earlier in the night with the table full of empty pfands waiting for us. There were a good amount of HVPs there and also a plethora of the usual LVP (Low Value Pfands). Being close to home and armed with a bag (and a bag thoughtfully left by the party people) we collected the lot.

This ended up being the haul.

And a basic breakdown of the individual value of what was collected.

The crate was ours already but through a rookie move we returned the bottles without the crate, rendering the crate non-returnable. Crates must be returned with the empty bottles inside by putting on a small conveyor belt at the bottom of the pfand machines. The machine somehow works it all out, maybe by weight and gives your the value of the individual bottles (in this case 11 x 8 cents) plus the crate pfand of 1.50 Euros for a total pfand refund of 2.38 Euros.

When Monday came around we carted the pfands to our local supermarket and joined the pfand machine queue.

With our turn we put bottle after bottle in. Not an unusual sight so no one cares.They will wait patiently and I am sure they have all done a big pfand run like this themselves. Out of our haul only a few turned out not to be pfands (either just not a pfand or a bottle from outside of Germany and therefore ineligible).

At the end of it we had fed the machine 1 crate, 17 x HVPs, and 49 LVP for a total refund of 8.57 Euros.  

We used our docket to buy our groceries for the next couple of days, only being a couple of Euros out of pocket for the entire shop that came to just over 10 Euros.

So pfand collecting it's not something worth quitting your day job for - if you have one. However, pfand hunting represents real money for those that need it and, as we have seen in the past, can add up to large sums if you target the HVPs or have the time and determination to gather huge quantities of HVPs and LVPs.

For us pfand hunting is more of a game (HVPs are always on the radar) and while we will of course return our own pfands in the future the 'off the street' collection is better left to those that need it more. Making a habit of hunting down 'the big score' for us is likely to be an infrequent occurrence...though I didn't say never! :P