Instead of the single-use paper or plastic cups that Gearhard would usually line up for the barista slinging espresso, he’s passing over shiny new reusable cups that bear the slogan “Sip, Return, Repeat”. Customers who need their lattes to go can take the purple cups with them, then return them to one of 60 bins scattered across downtown Petaluma when they’ve finished. Each cup comes with a trackable QR code to help monitor results.
First-of-it’s-kind lol. The German city of Tuebingen does it for 2-3 years already.
This was how all glass bottles used to work during most of the 20th century.
I mean, good for them, but returnable packaging isn’t that crazy of an idea. It’s not surprising that someone came up with “hey give us back the thing instead of trashing it and we’ll use it again” before the year we figured out talking computers.
Generally the whole of Germany has the Pfand system, where you pay a 25¢ deposit when you buy a bottle that you get back once you return it.
Tuebingen did their re-usable cups and bowl stuff to tackle trash from one time packaging like burgers, paper cups and so on. The city imposed a tax on the one time stuff that then “soft-forced” people to adopt the returnable packaging.
Honestly, it’s not much different to the refillable water bottles people carry around. Now people hand over their boxes to the Dönermann to get their Dönerbox.
I wish I could just bring my empty jug of washing detergent / dish soap / whatever and refill it.
Some places allow you to buy in bulk and pay detergent by weight.
The pharmacy I go to have some bulk/refill station
https://purenature.bio/en/pages/zero-dechet
unbreakable glassware could be an option
I worked for a glass bottle company for 8 years. Glass used to be a lot thicker, and returnable bottles were designed exactly for repeat uses. But for cost savings, lightweight single use bottles came into play especially as technology improved to blow the glass with more even thickness. Less weight equals more bottles on a truck from the glass manufacturer to the filler, from the filler to the distributor, from the distributor to the grocery stores.