Glass bottle recycling in Munich?

I have just moved to Munich and have noticed that most of my neighbours save their glass bottles of Water, Apfelschorle, Orange Juice, whatever when they are done with them. What are we supposed to do with these bottles? Can we put them with the regular rubbish/trash or do we need to recycle them somewhere?

Thanks, Vanessa

Hi Vanessa!
Welcome to Toytown! There are two reasons your neighbours might be saving their bottles. They might be planning on taking them to a bottle bank somewhere, for normal recycling. Or they might be "Pfand"bottles, ie bottles with a deposit on them. An awful lot of bottles here in Germany have deposits, which means you pay something like 50cents on top of the price of the drink, which is for the bottle. When you take your empty bottle back to the shop, you get the 50 cents back. If you decide you can't be bothered, fair enough, but you lose your money. The same thing applies for all drinks cans.

V-girl. I was told to take mine to the recycling bins around the block. How annoying! But since I love my landlord I wouldn't want to get caught dumping them in the trash. There are these large monsterous looking bins here and there. Just ask where they are close to you. Mine are a 5 minute walk away.

Don't spend too much time sorting your bottles out into the right colours - they all get dumped into the same container in the back of the collection truck anyway. Along with the tins & plastics.

The collection truck is seperated into 3 sections. One section per color.

Not the one that collects from the recycling point by my apartment. Everything (including tins & plastics) goes into the same compartment.

Separation of glass by colour is pointless anyway - they melt it all in the same furnace and separate out the dyes or whatever it is that colours the glass.

Erm not the truck that collects from the bottle banks at the end of my road. Or do the trucks in Frankfurt, Cologne, Erlangen or Stuttgart. I have always seen it mixed. In all the places I have lived in Germany. All the time that I've lived here (which is coming up to 6 years in total if I include my placement year).
It costs the companies that collect the glass (as the various city councils outsource this work) too much to separate.
Katrina
PS Welcome to Munich Vanessa!

My local shop has just installed one of these automated machines where you have to labouriously feed in each bottle when returning 'pfand' beer bottles. Last count was 58...

I've always wondered about the colour thing as well since recycling is a fairly intensive industrial process. Just as the notice at the glass bank tells you to remove all caps etc. Surely they smash it all up and extract the metal and stuff anyway before it goes in to a furnace?