The place I live - Edmonton, Alberta, Canada - has, for more than fifty years, had a deposit program in place for beverage containers - pop bottles, liquor bottles, beer cans, etc. Back when I was a kid, we'd search the back alleys and high grass for bottles, as you could take three bottles back to the corner store and get a popsicle.

The whole thing has become bigger and slightly better organized over the years, but bottle picking is still very much a thing, here. People in the more residential or suburban parts of the city will keep them in the garage or shed, and periodically load up the car trunk to take a batch to the bottle depot. Organizations like Boy Scouts will do bottle drives, and hit those areas, too.

I live closer to the inner city, and here normal practice for many apartment dwellers is to take your bottles out back and set them next to the recycling dumpster, so the homeless and other bottle pickers can find them easily. Trash cans on busy pedestrian streets have a wide lip on them, where (by design or happy accident, I'm not sure) it's easy to set your empty water bottle or pop can so a bottle picker doesn't have to go diving into the garbage to get it.

I don't know anyone who grew up here who throws bottles in the garbage - we all automatically save them, either to turn them in ourselves or give to someone else. I'm always a little shocked, to be honest, when I see someone put a beer bottle in the garbage can - it just seems so odd to me, as if you picked a coin up off the floor and threw it in the trash rather than putting it in your pocket.

Is it like this where you live? What's your deposit culture, if you have one?

Many U.S. States have deposits. Michigan has the highest in the U.S. with a 10 cent deposit, most other states have a 5 cent deposit. I don't know top of my head how many states, but I think it's 10 or so that have a bottle deposit.

Alas there is nothing like that here or, to the best of my knowledge, in the UK.

When I was a child there used to be a deposit on bottles and we used to return them to the shop to collect our 3d which was not a paltry sum of money to us children, it could buy two ounces of sweets.

We have recycling but we are not paid for it, in Jersey we have one container for glass, one for tins, one for paper and they are recycled.

I remember when visiting Canada in 1977 seeing that drink cans etc could earn money and was impressed.

I only knew of four or five states that had a deposit added...Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, and Virginia do not.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g191-c113378/United-States:Bottle.Container.Deposits.html

Since 2010, Delaware repealed its deposit law, leaving 10 states with deposits on the books in the U.S. Michigan has 10 cents, the other nine are all 5 cents on at least come containers. California, Maine and Vermont have deposits that vary depending on type/size of the battle.


This would be good for either a single Q, or a full on Quiz from someone. I'd play it.

Oh, we also have a plastic bottle recycling bin.

We used to have a deposit system for glass bottles here in the UK during the 60s and early 70s. During the 1970s, me and my friends would often return our parents glass beer bottles to the off licence at the local pub and collect the deposit which was around 2p per bottle back then.

What the landlord didn't know at the time was that while a couple of us were returning the bottles at the front, one of us was getting over the wall at the back and passing bottles to another...

I suppose, in a way, we were pioneers in recycling! Hahaha

I love it.

I remember that we used to have to return the bottles to shops selling the same brands, such as Corona or Quencher. They used to re-use the bottles after washing them but I guess that it became cheaper to add a little to the cost of the product and do away with the bottle washing process.

We lived opposite a Corona delivery man so I never got a chance to snaffle the deposit money when I was a kid. My mother would tell him how many bottles we wanted and he'd knock the deposit money off her bill; I expect she liked it that way, I woz robbed!

We salvaged all sorts of things when I was a kid. For example, newspapers and magazines were collected once a fortnight - these days some of those things are rejected because they say it's not cost-effective to remove the by-products like printers ink, but if they could do it in the 50s why not now? And while I understand why foodstuffs need to be washed off empty bottles and jars, it can't be environmentally friendly if I have to use lots of hot water to get something clean enough to throw away...

Caroline when I visit my daughter she doesn't have a dishwasher and I absolutely hate washing out the catfood tins, ewk. At least I can put empty items in with my dishwasher load rather than washing them separately.

It was only a few months ago the area in which I live started roadside collections of anything other than general rubbish and glass, now we have general and glass every week, as normal, then two paper, one tin and one plastic bottle collections each month. I used to have to drive to a recycling centre with my papers and plastic bottles so I am happy with the new arrangement.

I remember bringing back empty bottles and glass jam jars to the local grocery store with my siblings. We were allowed keep the couple of pence we got for them and use it to go to the cinema.

Where I live in France we have three dustbins - one for biodegradable and garden waste, collected weekly, one for tin cans, "tetrapack" cartons (milks, soups, sauces), cardboard, foil packaging and such like, collected fortnightly, and an "everything else", which is collected weekly.

We also have an area put aside by the community services where we can bring "big" garden waste, (for example when we trim the hedges). It's left to compost down and anybody can go along and pick up a barrowful or a trailerful of compost whenever they need.

There are bottle banks, paper banks and clothes banks in several places around the village where we can leave our recyclables at any time. There are bins at the entrances to many shops where you can deposit light bulbs, batteries or plastic bottle tops, used water filters, small electrical appliances ... One of the local clothing stores even give you a money voucher for their store for every three articles of used clothing you bring back to them (it doesn't have to be their own brand clothes).

Every local community has a small, free-of-charge or 1 €-per-passage, recycling plant for things like old furniture, oils (cooking, car + other), paints, toxic wastes, electrical appliances, wood, batteries...

There is absolutely no excuse not to sort through all your rubbish and put it in the right place for recycling.


When I lived in Belgium a dozen-or-so years ago, the system was similar. However, we had to recycle all cartons and plastics in clear plastic bags, and if you messed up and put the wrong stuff in it your bag wasn't collected. Our "everything else" bin cost more to be collected, and the recyclable stuff was either free or significantly cheaper - a great incentive to pay attention and sort stuff properly. We could bring back glass beer bottles to the supermarket entrance, where we were given a coupon for a certain amount per bottle, deducted from our checkout bill afterwards.

Here in UK, many supermarkets have a recycling area, but the best one was at a Tesco a friend used to go to. There was a Tesco Clubcard scanner and she got a point for every third deposit. She said there was usually a queue to drop off there. I wonder if it has all stopped now that local councils have elbowed their way in.

Here in Western Australia we have two bins, one for re-cycling which is emptied fortnightly and one for household rubbish which is collected on a weekly basis. Periodically we have a greenwaste collection. This is for tree prunings etc. Twice a year householders on a given date, will put on the verges, any items they wish to get rid of like old fridges, furniture, ovens, TV sets etc. etc. which are collected and disposed of. It seems to work well. But it is amusing to see people cruising the streets with their cars, scrounging for anything they see, that they can use and so contrary to Council laws they take it....comes down to the old adage, "one man's trash is another man's treasure"......LOL

As well as our roadside collections we have various recycling areas that we can use so can get rid of just about anything but we have to take the items there, they are free to use for domestic 'waste'. There is a green waste area the in another part of the island is the main recycling. That has areas for cardboard, electricals, general etc. There is also a shed for 'has still got life in it' items, people place unwanted but not broken things there and the public are welcome to take whatever they like, legally. Years ago they wouldn't permit dumped items to be taken but on a Sunday afternoon when it was open but without staff, people used to go and remove things like children's bikes, now commonsense prevails and if something can be used then it is true recycling.

This is all very interesting. I have to say I find it amazing that so few places have deposit for return.

We do the same kind of recycling as everywhere else, and it works pretty well, I think. My apartment building has two bins, one for recyclable material, one for garbage, and they are both well used.

But while a lot of people do recycle a lot don't bother. Even though the bins are side by side it's not unusual to see recyclable stuff in the garbage bin.

But when actual money is involved, most people take a lot more care. Even if they don't want to return bottles for themselves, they are liable to take a second and set them aside so they can be picked up by someone else. The whole thing is so successful here that a few years ago they expanded it - milk containers didn't use to be part of the system, but about ten years ago they started charging a deposit on milk too. At first there was a little outcry - "Oh, now milk is more expensive and we need milk for our babies!" but the reality is that if you have some way of getting that heavy container full of milk home, you have some way of getting the flattened, light, empty container to the depot for your five cents. Milk is sold here only in plastic or in cardboard containers, and the big plastic jugs are made to be flattened easily.

This happens where I live too, but mostly for things that contain metal. Most people around here recycle their scrap metal, and some of them use it as their source of income if they don't have a job, or if they want extra money in retirement. Some even post signs at street corners that read something along the lines of "Haul off most anything" with a phone number. Most of the recycling centers we have here where I live are for scrap metal.

Tennessee doesn't have returnable bottles. Recycling in this area is also almost non-existent or it is not very convenient or easily accessible. We have a few recycling places here, but most are for businesses to take certain types of materials or they are for scrap metal.

There is one recycling place that will pick up your recycling curbside, but they charge for it. It's about $144/yr., but they charge an extra $1/month for glass. At least once a year, they have a citywide recycling day where they set up at the fairgrounds and anyone can take their recyclables and drop them off free of charge.

I know that at least one of the places accepts paper and plastic and will pay you a small amount for them. I have a recycling bin outside my room at school, and about once a month or so, the school secretary will empty it and carry the paper and plastic to turn it in for money. Some of the schools also do this as a way to raise funds for certain clubs.