The establishment of container-deposit on single-use beverage packaging in Germany

摘要

In 2003, the German government introduced a deposit on disposable single-use beverage containers in addition to the already existing deposit on reusable beverage containers. Politicians meant to enhance and stabilize the use of reusable beverage containers by lowering the attractiveness of beverages in single-use containers through a high deposit. After the new law was introduced, the usage of reusable beverage containers increased, but after a while it started to decrease again. The aim of this paper is to analyze the assumed feedback mechanisms behind this unexpected behavior. Our analysis shows, that the establishment of the container deposit in Germany is a prime example of policy resistance, which is a common problem in policy making. We argue that the unexpected behavior can be explained by the fact that unclaimed deposit counts as profit for retail and production companies. In that way, the container deposit made beverages in single-use containers less attractive for the consumers but, in turn, increased the profit per unit for the retailers. That led to a higher supply of beverages in single-use containers and a massive shortfall of beverages in reusable containers. Consumers substituted their demand by available beverages in single-use containers and that results in higher sales for the retailers. The sales, in turn, are an incentive to provide an even higher supply of beverages in single-use containers as it otherwise would have been.