Glass is half-empty

Berlin may well be one of the hippest tourist destinations in Europe, but it is also a city of harsh realities.

More and more locals are scouring the city's streets and bins for empty glass and plastic bottles, which they can turn in to collect a cash deposit. Many of the bottle-collectors say they are forced to do it to make ends meet.

Thanks to legislation eight years ago, they can. The German government introduced a mandatory deposit on drinks packaging in 2003.

Consumers pay the deposit when they buy drinks in shops and supermarkets - eight euro cents ($0.10) for glass bottles and 25 euro cents for plastic ones. They get their deposits back when they return their empties.

Similar systems exist in some US states and in other countries like Australia, but few countries perform the "money back for your bottles" exercise as ardently as Germany.

But many people leave bottles lying on the streets or throw them away after a night out or a large public event.

Valuable rubbish

The idea behind the whole scheme in Germany was to reduce waste and encourage recycling. But now, people are often less environmentally and more economically motivated to use the system and use it to supplement their incomes.

Initially, it was mainly homeless people, alcoholics and drug addicts living on the streets who collected the bottles. But recently, it's been Berlin's financially troubled pensioners and long-term unemployed who have turned to collecting the discarded bottles as well.

Sixty-one year old Günter, for instance, is a former mechanic who was forced into early retirement when he fell ill. He has been collecting bottles in his local area of Tempelhof for the past few years.

He said his pension of 700 euros ($947.34) was not enough to provide a decent standard of living. He now makes up to five euros per day by collecting bottles.

"I collect bottles all year round, depending on my mood," Günther explained. "I get to meet all sorts of people, which can be fun. People just throw the bottles away anyway, so why not make a bit of money out of it?"

Sometimes the people Günther meets are less than helpful, however - like security guards. He used to collect empties at the Tempelhofer Feld - a former airfield turned festival park - until guards began running him off.  He now collects the majority of his bottles from underground stations during the night.

"I know it's because they didn't want all the tourists seeing the real poverty in Berlin," said Günther bitterly.

Pension deficit

The number of people collecting bottles on the streets is estimated to have doubled in the past two years, according to a report in Berlin's BZ news portal. Social experts say the trend is a clear sign that Berlin's social system is struggling to cope both with Berlin's very high unemployment and with the city's growing elderly population.

Berlin is home to about 648,000 people over the age of 65. Many receive a basic pension of 600 euros per month and turn to charitable organizations for assistance with clothing and food.

Sabine Werth, chairwoman of Berliner Tafel, a non-profit organization that distributes food donations to charities in Berlin, said many people have started collecting bottles to help pay for refrigerators and washing machines - things which they normally cannot afford.

But collecting the bottles serves a further function.

"For the older generation it provides a sense of purpose," Werth said. "They see it as a reason to get out of the house and meet people."

"It's really about breaking out of the cycle of poverty and loneliness - two things which almost always go hand-in-hand," she said.

Internet scheme

It's hard to imagine but a new Internet scheme may even be able to help bottle-collectors raise their deposit "revenue".

Communication Design student Jonas Kakoschke is the founder of a new online scheme that hopes to make life easier for Berlin's bottle collectors.

His website - pfandgeben.de - invites people to log on and find contact details for local collectors to whom they "donate" their bottles. The collectors take the bottles and keep the cash deposit when they have returned them to a shop.

"My one concern was about drunks turning up on people's doorsteps to collect bottles," said Kakoschke. "But that isn't the case at all. Most of the collectors are pensioners or unemployed people looking to earn a bit of extra cash to get by."

The scheme has been expanded and now includes cities like Cologne, Augsburg and Essen.

But Berliner Tafel’s Sabine Werth remains skeptical.

"The online scheme is interesting, but it will inevitably be targeted by collectors with the capacity to take large quantities of bottles. It won't help the majority of collectors who are really destitute."

False economy

In addition, the people who really need the money from bottle-collecting face ever tougher competition, with more and more people searching for fewer bottles.

A study released by the German Environment Ministry in 2010 indicated a sharp decrease in the use of reusable packaging - the type that carries a deposit.

It has been suggested that discount stores, which dominate the beverages market in Germany, offer less than 50 percent of recyclable materials in drinks packaging to avoid the deposit and cut costs for customers.

The bid for a discount, then, is creating a tough market for some of the poorest people in Germany.

Author: Helen Whittle
Editor: Zulfikar Abbany