Criminals Manufacture Bottles for Germany
From the desk of Sacha Tamm on Thu, 2006-11-16 17:24
As reported recently by the German press, criminals are manipulating the German bottle deposit system on a massive scale in order to make money. They are manufacturing bottles, falsifying the product codes and then returning the self-made bottles to supermarkets throughout Germany.
Obviously, there is a flaw in the entire system – even the word “deposit” is misleading. Usually, a deposit is paid for something of value, i.e. an item that the owner would like to have returned. However, the item in question is a non-refundable bottle that cannot be reused. The incentive for criminals stems from the very low production costs – much less than one half of the deposit amount. What typically happens in such a well-intentioned state action is: more instead of fewer bottles are produced; non-refundable bottles are transported across long distances; creative forms of crime are invented.
This is reminiscent of a practice in India, where the government offers a premium for killing venomous snakes if the head of the dead snake is handed in to the authorities. What happened? You guessed it – venomous snake farms.
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Submitted by Kapitein Andre on Mon, 2006-11-20 11:29.
I was under the impression that someone initially paid a deposit for the bottle when it was purchased with its contents in the first place; also, that the glass was re-used or at very least recycled?
Secondly, while I am sure the system could be made more efficient, what do foreign criminals have to do with French corporate takeovers or recycling used bottles with dead snakes in India?
Actually the article stated
Submitted by Voyager on Fri, 2006-11-17 12:41.
Actually the article stated the bottles were manufactured in Lithuania which is also the centre of the best passport and Euro banknote forgers, and surprisingly enough the most frequently forged Euro banknotes are German issued ones.......................the heading of this comment suggested the criminals were German whereas I suspect they are international
bottle bottle
Submitted by roughdoggo on Thu, 2006-11-16 22:21.
Poor Mr Tamm! Boo-hoo! What you didn't tell your readers is that German manufacturers have fought the return deposit system for bottles for years. Numerous BS reasons have been given for this; every slimy legal tactic has been used by German manufacturers to prevent the mandated deposit system from taking effect.
What you conveniently forgot to mention is that technological has-been Germany was beaten to the punch on up-to-date return bottle technology by a small firm in a small Nordic country. That company now dominates the return bottle machine business worldwide, because it had a vision and know-how that German manufacturers failed to exploit or develope. This was something the Germans, with typical EU big nation hypocrisy, could not handle.
I would not be surprised if it were someday revealed that the inadequate deposit charge you describe, which enables criminals to circumvent the system, was an artifact of the same set of German manufacturers and their political friends. Who knows, perhaps they themselves are the ones behind the false bottle scheme!
One thing's for certain - the day that Germany invents its own home-grown bottle return system that can do the job, the whinging will evaporate overnight. Germany has certainly learned much from the French, who are masters at foreign corporate takeovers made possible by the rules they set up themselves within the EU, but who whine every time the same rules regarding takeovers are applied to them. Free enterprise my arse!
East-European Criminals Manufacture Bottles
Submitted by Arpad on Thu, 2006-11-16 22:17.
A gang of East-European forger was caught in Germany trying to cash in the deposit for 150.000 forged PET bottles.
The bottles were manufactured in Lithuania and had an equivalent deposit value of 38.000 Euro.