The executive committee of the AGVU, the German packing and environmental services association, agreed to with government’s legislation mandating the start of a federally uniform pledge system. The system is expected to begin Oct. 1.
He said the association had decided to introduce a system that several suppliers including the government's own printing service could offer rather than the recycling machines offered by Tomra and Prokent, two systems that hoped to handle the business, saying it wanted an efficient and compact system that even small shops could use.
Germany introduced deposit charges on bottles of beer, mineral water and soft drinks on January 1 and the drinks trade has promised to come up with a unified recycling system by October. Some 60,000 machines could be needed nationwide in a trade valued by experts at an annual 500 million euros.