8 ms·

This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage.

by rladd 5y ago

kebman 5y ago
The cost of food is suppressed, because our elites, leaders and politicians know what happens when that too is subjected to inflation as well, and that is revolution. Meanwhile, as far as I can see, the frog-boiling of regular people has been steady at least since the 60's. Back then the cost of a nice apartment was about one or two years pay. Today it's easily 10 years pay, and so the former middle class opt out of having children because all value property is too high for them to afford. Meanwhile the only promise our elites are willing to give us, is that we'll own nothing and be happy. Well, we'll see about that. Because what's happening now is that they are now unable to keep inflation from also seeping into everyday products. Gas and power is already buckling here in Europe, and I suspect food prices will be next. Unless they can control it, then social unrest is sure to follow.
- pxtail 5y ago
  > former middle class opt out of having children because all value property is too high for them to afford Don't worry, just go ahead and don't forget to wince when looking at demographics stats, South Korea and Japan will be your guide.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Yet in Japan housing is a deflationary asset for at least last 20 years.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Don't forget the wonderful American invention of the "gig economy". Minimum wage, healthcare, job security? No we must destroy everything our ancestors fought for.
rootusrootus 5y ago
I think Oregon has the right idea. We did invent the bottle bill, so I guess that isn't a complete surprise. The redemption value is tied not to inflation, but to redemption rate. If it drops low enough, the deposit is increased. We started at 5 cents, and in 2015 the redemption rate had slipped down to 65%, so the deposit was doubled to 10 cents.
- gkop 5y ago
  Ok so we raise money to rent giant warehouses, hit the streets and buy up all the bottles for 10 cents, and then just warehouse them. Redemption rate slips, deposit increases -> profit.
tdeck 5y ago
Where I live we have curbside recycling and people are paid a living wage to come by in a truck and pick it up. However, the folks 'collecting" these cans are actually taking them out of the bins during the night / morning before pickup.
gambiting 5y ago
The cost of drinks largely hasn't increased in line with inflation, so you'd very quickly arrive at an unsustainable situation where returning a can/bottle would give you more money than it cost you to buy it.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  It can never give you more than it cost — the redemption value gets added to the cost of the beverage. So a $1 bottle of Coke would cost $1.05 if the redemption value were 5¢ And it would cost $1.50 if the redemption value were 50¢. The reason the redemption value has not gone up much is that people would balk at paying so much for the goods upfront, IMO. Adding 20¢ per can would add nearly $5 to the cost of a 24-pack or soda. The cost per ounce of soda drops dramatically when you buy in volume, so the redemption value would grow to be a substantial portion of the total cost for larger purchases.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    They would soon get used to it. People are hardly going to give up drinking sugary soft drinks because of high deposit values. They might be reluctant but if there is no other way to get that sugary hit they will do it and eventually it will be just how things are done.
    - gnicholas 5y ago
      You're right that they won't give up drinking soda! But the experience of Philadelphia, [1] which imposed a per-ounce soda tax (later repealed) shows us that these tend to drive consumers to other jurisdictions (NJ) to buy groceries. This means Philadelphia lost out not only on soda sales, but also on other groceries purchased at the same time. Another issue that arises is that people will actually transport recyclables across state lines to arbitrage the differences in redemption value. [2] This only happens if there are large enough disparities, but in the US this is almost certain to happen due to the different policy choices made by nearby states. 1: https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Seiler-et-al_SodaTaxes2020_SSRN-id3302335.pdf https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/... 2: https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/arrests-in-16-million-recycling-fraud-case/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/arrests-in-16-million...
eru 5y ago
That's a bit silly. Bottle deposit are there to incentivise some people to return them. They just need to be high enough to do that.
- monkeycantype 5y ago
  I disagree. If the amount is low enough that it only incentivises people that are desperate, you are at arms length hiring people at poverty wages. I agree that we seem to have such low expectations of our society, that wanting something better than that seems fanciful and foolish.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 5y ago
    Wages become a market question. The more their worth the more people start looking for a limited supply. Suppose you could pick up a can every 6 seconds (including time to collect deposit) that’s 600 cans per hour at even 5c per can people would make 30$/hour which is solid pay. Except at that value people would go out if they could pickup a can every 12 seconds and make 15$/hour, down to whatever wages still motivate homeless people. At a higher value say 25c/can picking up 1 can per minute is 15$/hour so again people would go out even if they weren’t collecting very many cans. Higher deposits should result in people doing a better job even if their not paid more.
    - eru 5y ago
      Very nicely analysed! That's basically the same reason why Uber can't give their drivers a raise, even if they wanted to. Unless they were barring new would-be drivers from joining. Of course, that also means that they can't cut drivers' pay easily either. Especially with competition from eg Lyft.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
kwhitefoot 5y ago
Here in Norway a half litre or smaller container has a deposit of 2 kr, bigger containers are 3 kr (22 and 33 US cent respectively). But it isn't the size of the deposit that drives the return rate (95% or more here in Norway) it is the ease of doing it. Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return even if they were not purchased in that shop and even if they are of a different brand. So every supermarket has a reverse vending machine [1] where you deposit the bottles and cans and get a receipt that you can exchange for money or goods at the till. [1] Usually from Tomra: https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse-vending/deposit-return-schemes https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse-vending/deposit-...
- Semaphor 5y ago
  Same in Germany, there is also the "Pfand gehört daneben" (Deposit [bottles] belong next [to the trashcan]) campaign, often with bottle holder on the trash can. The whole deposit system is extremely convenient when you are drinking in the park or beach, where you usually don't want to bring all the bottles back again, but you'll get people coming by and ask if you have any deposit bottles to give to them.
  - subpixel 5y ago
    Isn’t there a decline in deposit bottle usage in Germany? When I was a kid beer was delivered to your house by the crate and empties picked up. I was led to believe this has become less common, which would be regrettable bc it was elegantly efficient.
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      Deliveries, I don't know. But every sparkling water, beer bottle has deposit as have all (?) cans. So a decline would be kinda impossible unless people stop buying those.
    - laulis 5y ago
      There's Flaschenpost[1] in some cities, and afaik it's pretty popular. Me and my partner use it pretty regularly. [1] https://www.flaschenpost.de/ https://www.flaschenpost.de/
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> to give the collectors a living wage. Why would this be a goal?
- relaxing 5y ago
  1. Cans need to be collected 2. Everyone needs a living wage Hope this helps.
  - jstanley 5y ago
    If the value of having the cans collected is less than the cost of having someone collect them, then it turns out the cans don't need to be collected after all.
  - umvi 5y ago
    > 2. Everyone needs a living wage I think everyone would agree with this, but phrased slightly differently I don't think everyone would agree: "Every method of making money must be capable of generating a living wage for the person using that method"
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      >> 2. Everyone needs a living wage > I think everyone would agree with this Are you kidding? You'd have to be insane to agree with that. Some people are already independently wealthy. Some people -- a really large number of people -- are supported by other people.
      - umvi 5y ago
        I think everyone would agree that, barring rich people, at the end of the day everyone needs to be supported by someone making at least a living wage.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        And it should be illegal for those people to have jobs themselves?
najqh 5y ago
Precisely what we need is to make the deposit prices so high that the homeless will fight over them. Then we can record them and upload the videos to liveleak. Oh...
- cto_of_antifa 5y ago
umvi 5y ago
> This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage It's not just inflation you have to keep up with but also falling material costs as aluminum is more mass produced, etc. Where does the money come from for the refunds? Without government subsidies I don't think it would make economic sense for a recycling center to pay $.50 or even $.25 per can if the amount of aluminum scrap is only worth $.10
- i_am_proteus 5y ago
  Typically these function as deposit programs: e.g. $0.10 per can is levied at retail purchase, to be hypothetically returned when the can is turned in for recycling, effectively creating bounties for the pickup and recycle of cans discarded rather than recycled.
  - umvi 5y ago
    Ah, so GP is essentially proposing raising prices on canned and bottled goods then to allow collectors to have living wage. That is a tricky needle to thread though because raise refund prices too much and fewer people will litter because it's like throwing money on the ground.
    - PeterisP 5y ago
      "raise refund prices too much and fewer people will litter" - what drawbacks would that have?
- night862 5y ago
  Deposit is paid by the purchaser, you reclaim the .5 or .10 deposit when you return them for recycling.
rhuru 5y ago
Here in california the fee per bottle and can goes to state as taxes. You can get it back by turning in bottles and cans at a recycling center but the California state had made it impossible to return these cans for money. They have systematically shut down automated recycling redemption machines, caused long lines at in person centers and so on.
- function_seven 5y ago
  > They have systematically shut down automated recycling redemption machines I remember these machines outside of every grocery store, and now I don't see them anywhere anymore. It never occurred to me it was a purposeful effort, but then again I never gave it much thought. What caused the machines to disappear?
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    > What caused the machines to disappear? Because people hate the homeless and want to punish them, for some reason. It's the same reason we can't have comfortable public benches. Edit: Grammer
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Because people hate for the homeless and want to punish them, for some reason It's more, I think, that people hate seeing the homeless, and want to keep them away. They don't particularly care enough to hate them, they just don't want to have to encounter them.
      - jonny_eh 5y ago
        That's a distinction without a difference.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        Insofar as the “why” of anything matters, it's not. Insofar as only the action matters, the whole question of why is moot.
efficax 5y ago
In Germany, at least last time i was there, a plastic bottle got you a full Euro back as a deposit. Aluminum a little less but still good. The result was you basically never saw a plastic bottle on the ground outside of tourist areas where people didn't know about the Pfand. And even there, the bottle doesn't stay on the ground for long because that's a whole euro there on the ground. Nobody throws away a whole euro, and just about every one will bend down to pick one up.

This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage.

by rladd 5y ago

This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage.

kebman 5y ago

The cost of food is suppressed, because our elites, leaders and politicians know what happens when that too is subjected to inflation as well, and that is revolution. Meanwhile, as far as I can see, the frog-boiling of regular people has been steady at least since the 60's. Back then the cost of a nice apartment was about one or two years pay. Today it's easily 10 years pay, and so the former middle class opt out of having children because all value property is too high for them to afford. Meanwhile the only promise our elites are willing to give us, is that we'll own nothing and be happy. Well, we'll see about that. Because what's happening now is that they are now unable to keep inflation from also seeping into everyday products. Gas and power is already buckling here in Europe, and I suspect food prices will be next. Unless they can control it, then social unrest is sure to follow.

pxtail 5y ago
> former middle class opt out of having children because all value property is too high for them to afford Don't worry, just go ahead and don't forget to wince when looking at demographics stats, South Korea and Japan will be your guide.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Yet in Japan housing is a deflationary asset for at least last 20 years.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Don't forget the wonderful American invention of the "gig economy". Minimum wage, healthcare, job security? No we must destroy everything our ancestors fought for.

rootusrootus 5y ago

I think Oregon has the right idea. We did invent the bottle bill, so I guess that isn't a complete surprise. The redemption value is tied not to inflation, but to redemption rate. If it drops low enough, the deposit is increased. We started at 5 cents, and in 2015 the redemption rate had slipped down to 65%, so the deposit was doubled to 10 cents.

gkop 5y ago
Ok so we raise money to rent giant warehouses, hit the streets and buy up all the bottles for 10 cents, and then just warehouse them. Redemption rate slips, deposit increases -> profit.

tdeck 5y ago

Where I live we have curbside recycling and people are paid a living wage to come by in a truck and pick it up. However, the folks 'collecting" these cans are actually taking them out of the bins during the night / morning before pickup.

gambiting 5y ago

The cost of drinks largely hasn't increased in line with inflation, so you'd very quickly arrive at an unsustainable situation where returning a can/bottle would give you more money than it cost you to buy it.

gnicholas 5y ago
It can never give you more than it cost — the redemption value gets added to the cost of the beverage. So a $1 bottle of Coke would cost $1.05 if the redemption value were 5¢ And it would cost $1.50 if the redemption value were 50¢. The reason the redemption value has not gone up much is that people would balk at paying so much for the goods upfront, IMO. Adding 20¢ per can would add nearly $5 to the cost of a 24-pack or soda. The cost per ounce of soda drops dramatically when you buy in volume, so the redemption value would grow to be a substantial portion of the total cost for larger purchases.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  They would soon get used to it. People are hardly going to give up drinking sugary soft drinks because of high deposit values. They might be reluctant but if there is no other way to get that sugary hit they will do it and eventually it will be just how things are done.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    You're right that they won't give up drinking soda! But the experience of Philadelphia, [1] which imposed a per-ounce soda tax (later repealed) shows us that these tend to drive consumers to other jurisdictions (NJ) to buy groceries. This means Philadelphia lost out not only on soda sales, but also on other groceries purchased at the same time. Another issue that arises is that people will actually transport recyclables across state lines to arbitrage the differences in redemption value. [2] This only happens if there are large enough disparities, but in the US this is almost certain to happen due to the different policy choices made by nearby states. 1: https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Seiler-et-al_SodaTaxes2020_SSRN-id3302335.pdf https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/... 2: https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/arrests-in-16-million-recycling-fraud-case/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/arrests-in-16-million...

eru 5y ago

That's a bit silly. Bottle deposit are there to incentivise some people to return them. They just need to be high enough to do that.

monkeycantype 5y ago
I disagree. If the amount is low enough that it only incentivises people that are desperate, you are at arms length hiring people at poverty wages. I agree that we seem to have such low expectations of our society, that wanting something better than that seems fanciful and foolish.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 5y ago
  Wages become a market question. The more their worth the more people start looking for a limited supply. Suppose you could pick up a can every 6 seconds (including time to collect deposit) that’s 600 cans per hour at even 5c per can people would make 30$/hour which is solid pay. Except at that value people would go out if they could pickup a can every 12 seconds and make 15$/hour, down to whatever wages still motivate homeless people. At a higher value say 25c/can picking up 1 can per minute is 15$/hour so again people would go out even if they weren’t collecting very many cans. Higher deposits should result in people doing a better job even if their not paid more.
  - eru 5y ago
    Very nicely analysed! That's basically the same reason why Uber can't give their drivers a raise, even if they wanted to. Unless they were barring new would-be drivers from joining. Of course, that also means that they can't cut drivers' pay easily either. Especially with competition from eg Lyft.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

kwhitefoot 5y ago

Here in Norway a half litre or smaller container has a deposit of 2 kr, bigger containers are 3 kr (22 and 33 US cent respectively). But it isn't the size of the deposit that drives the return rate (95% or more here in Norway) it is the ease of doing it. Here all shops that sell such goods are required to accept the containers in return even if they were not purchased in that shop and even if they are of a different brand. So every supermarket has a reverse vending machine [1] where you deposit the bottles and cans and get a receipt that you can exchange for money or goods at the till. [1] Usually from Tomra: https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse-vending/deposit-return-schemes https://www.tomra.com/en/collection/reverse-vending/deposit-...

Semaphor 5y ago
Same in Germany, there is also the "Pfand gehört daneben" (Deposit [bottles] belong next [to the trashcan]) campaign, often with bottle holder on the trash can. The whole deposit system is extremely convenient when you are drinking in the park or beach, where you usually don't want to bring all the bottles back again, but you'll get people coming by and ask if you have any deposit bottles to give to them.
- subpixel 5y ago
  Isn’t there a decline in deposit bottle usage in Germany? When I was a kid beer was delivered to your house by the crate and empties picked up. I was led to believe this has become less common, which would be regrettable bc it was elegantly efficient.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    Deliveries, I don't know. But every sparkling water, beer bottle has deposit as have all (?) cans. So a decline would be kinda impossible unless people stop buying those.
  - laulis 5y ago
    There's Flaschenpost[1] in some cities, and afaik it's pretty popular. Me and my partner use it pretty regularly. [1] https://www.flaschenpost.de/ https://www.flaschenpost.de/

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> to give the collectors a living wage. Why would this be a goal?

relaxing 5y ago
1. Cans need to be collected 2. Everyone needs a living wage Hope this helps.
- jstanley 5y ago
  If the value of having the cans collected is less than the cost of having someone collect them, then it turns out the cans don't need to be collected after all.
- umvi 5y ago
  > 2. Everyone needs a living wage I think everyone would agree with this, but phrased slightly differently I don't think everyone would agree: "Every method of making money must be capable of generating a living wage for the person using that method"
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    >> 2. Everyone needs a living wage > I think everyone would agree with this Are you kidding? You'd have to be insane to agree with that. Some people are already independently wealthy. Some people -- a really large number of people -- are supported by other people.
    - umvi 5y ago
      I think everyone would agree that, barring rich people, at the end of the day everyone needs to be supported by someone making at least a living wage.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        And it should be illegal for those people to have jobs themselves?

najqh 5y ago

Precisely what we need is to make the deposit prices so high that the homeless will fight over them. Then we can record them and upload the videos to liveleak. Oh...

cto_of_antifa 5y ago

umvi 5y ago

> This is why I have always thought that can and bottle deposit prices should keep up with inflation: to give the collectors a living wage It's not just inflation you have to keep up with but also falling material costs as aluminum is more mass produced, etc. Where does the money come from for the refunds? Without government subsidies I don't think it would make economic sense for a recycling center to pay $.50 or even $.25 per can if the amount of aluminum scrap is only worth $.10

i_am_proteus 5y ago
Typically these function as deposit programs: e.g. $0.10 per can is levied at retail purchase, to be hypothetically returned when the can is turned in for recycling, effectively creating bounties for the pickup and recycle of cans discarded rather than recycled.
- umvi 5y ago
  Ah, so GP is essentially proposing raising prices on canned and bottled goods then to allow collectors to have living wage. That is a tricky needle to thread though because raise refund prices too much and fewer people will litter because it's like throwing money on the ground.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    "raise refund prices too much and fewer people will litter" - what drawbacks would that have?
night862 5y ago
Deposit is paid by the purchaser, you reclaim the .5 or .10 deposit when you return them for recycling.

rhuru 5y ago

Here in california the fee per bottle and can goes to state as taxes. You can get it back by turning in bottles and cans at a recycling center but the California state had made it impossible to return these cans for money. They have systematically shut down automated recycling redemption machines, caused long lines at in person centers and so on.

function_seven 5y ago
> They have systematically shut down automated recycling redemption machines I remember these machines outside of every grocery store, and now I don't see them anywhere anymore. It never occurred to me it was a purposeful effort, but then again I never gave it much thought. What caused the machines to disappear?
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  > What caused the machines to disappear? Because people hate the homeless and want to punish them, for some reason. It's the same reason we can't have comfortable public benches. Edit: Grammer
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Because people hate for the homeless and want to punish them, for some reason It's more, I think, that people hate seeing the homeless, and want to keep them away. They don't particularly care enough to hate them, they just don't want to have to encounter them.
    - jonny_eh 5y ago
      That's a distinction without a difference.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        Insofar as the “why” of anything matters, it's not. Insofar as only the action matters, the whole question of why is moot.

efficax 5y ago

In Germany, at least last time i was there, a plastic bottle got you a full Euro back as a deposit. Aluminum a little less but still good. The result was you basically never saw a plastic bottle on the ground outside of tourist areas where people didn't know about the Pfand. And even there, the bottle doesn't stay on the ground for long because that's a whole euro there on the ground. Nobody throws away a whole euro, and just about every one will bend down to pick one up.