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There is a bottle in the wash line with a chip on the base that we have been tracking since 2022. As of last month it had made thirty round trips.
Returnable glass only works if returning is easier than not returning. Ours is worth € 0.50 against the next order, it can go back to any of the three bars, and nobody is asked for a receipt. That is the entire scheme, and seventy-one per cent of our bottles come home.
The maths nobody puts on a poster
A new bottle costs us more than the juice inside it on the cheapest line. Washing one costs a fraction of that. The break-even is around the fourth trip, which means the scheme paid for itself long before it became something we could talk about.
The chipped one is retired now. It sits on a shelf in the cold room, which is sentimental and slightly unhygienic, and we are keeping it anyway.