Walk along a river in Germany, Denmark or Lithuania and you will notice something missing: plastic bottles. Walk along one in Italy, Spain or France and you will not. The difference is not national character. It is a deposit of 15 to 25 cents, refunded when the bottle comes back.
Deposit-return systems are among the most effective environmental policies ever devised, and among the least glamorous. In the 17 European countries that have them, return rates for drink containers run between 85 and 98 percent. Germany, with the strictest scheme, collects about 98 percent of its single-use plastic bottles. In countries without a deposit, the rate hovers around 60 percent, and the missing 40 percent ends up in landfills, incinerators, hedgerows and the sea.
The E.U.’s packaging regulation, adopted last year, requires member states to reach a 90 percent collection rate for plastic bottles and aluminum cans by 2029. It does not require them to use a deposit. That was a concession to the beverage and retail industries, which argued that other methods could reach the target. The evidence that they can is thin. No country has approached 90 percent without a deposit. Several have spent two decades trying.
Austria introduced a scheme in January 2025 and reached 80 percent returns within a year. Ireland launched one in 2024 and now collects about 90 percent of containers. Both faced the same objections — cost, inconvenience, cluttered shop floors — and both found that the public adapted within months. The machines pay for themselves through unredeemed deposits and the value of clean, sorted material, which recyclers prize.
The holdouts are large: France, Italy and Spain together account for about 40 percent of the E.U.’s drink containers. France has debated a deposit three times since 2019 and backed down each time under pressure from local authorities who earn revenue from curbside recycling. That revenue is real. It is also smaller than the cost of cleaning beaches.
The European Commission should use its review of the packaging rules, due in 2028, to make deposits mandatory for any member state that misses the interim 2027 target. Harmonizing the amount and the labeling across borders, so that a bottle bought in Strasbourg can be returned in Kehl, would help too.
This is not a hard problem. It is a solved one. Europe simply needs to stop pretending that there is a second answer.
The Editorial Board is a contributing writer for The Continental Times Opinion section.