The Brilliance of Pfand

I went with Sabrina and Anne to Afrika Fest, an annual Würzburg festival with drum playing, African knick-knacks to buy, and African food to eat. Luckily, the festival was mostly just an excuse to drink German beer and eat food from all over the world, including India and South America–places not known for being part of the African continent.

Anyway, what really held my attention all night was the use of Pfand. According to my dictionary, Pfand means something like deposit or security. But it's much more than that, and it's brilliant.

When you buy a glass of beer at Afrika Fest, you must pay for its cost plus two extra euros. In return for these two extra euros, you get a silver-dollar-sized green disk. Only when return your empty cup and the green disk do you get your two euros back.

The idea is that the cups can be sterilized and reused, and so to get people to return them, a security deposit is included. The Pfand. "Ah," you say, "this is very much like the brilliant grocery cart system they use." Yes that is another version of the Pfand, and it is very similar, but there is one difference.

This version of a Pfand includes a seemingly useless green disk. But if you think about it, there's an important difference between a shopping cart and a beer cup. When your are shopping for milk and eggs it is unlikely that anyone will run off with your shopping cart while your back is turned so that they can collect the one euro deposit. But in the case of the beer cup and a two euro deposit with no green disk, it would not be very smart to leave your cup unattended on a table while you use dance or use the restroom.

Also notice that if you go back for a second glass of beer, you do not have to collect your deposit. You simply hold on to your little green disk, give them your old cup, and get a new (filled) cup. Your pay for the new beer, but not for another deposit.

I ate some South American food while at the festival that included a one euro Pfand for the plate. In Germany, the land of Pfand, the plates can be real porcelain because there is no fear that I will run off with the plate or throw it away. No sensible person would.

The Pfand also does wonders for encouraging people to recycle by holding their money until they return plastic bottles to the store (see the picture of Sabrina returning hers on flickr). No sane person in the US recycles as a way to make money. Recycling is a hobby for old people; a way to act morally superior; or, for very few, a neccessity-of-conscience. If we were really serious about encouraging recycling in the US we should switch to the Pfand system for a lot of things. The other good idea for cutting down waste is taxing packaging materials and the like, this is what Germany does. The Pfand, the taxes on packaging, and the German "Let's sort our garbage!" attitude are what make the country noticeably cleaner.

I'll withhold judgment on whether the US should follow Germany in this. Call me skeptical, but the gains from recycling bottles and cans aren't large, and it really is a hassle. Even the reduced packaging comes at a cost. The packaging on meat and cheese here isn't as fancy as in the US and few plastic bags are resealable.

One small change that I don't mind much is that coffee cans are scarce for reasons presumably having to do with taxes, and almost all you can buy are coffee brick-bags. For this reason, people here make more use of washable containers.

I'm switching from the literature class here to the economics class, and I think the first week is about environmental economics. I'll know a bit more about this stuff in a few weeks.