Lithuanian scam on German bottle deposit returns

A year or two ago Germany introduced laws whereby all (or most) bottled drinks must carry a deposit on the bottle. The empty bottles can be returned to supermarkets, fed into a machine that reads the barcode, and you get the money back.

The empties are usually worth 25 cents each.

Now the crafty Lithuanians have come up with a scam. They produce imitation bottles in their home country, together with fake barcodes, then drive round all the German supermarkets. They feed the machines and run off with the winnings.

Apparently they manufactured 150,000 bottles for a price of just a couple of cents each. The profit was more than €30k.

German press are calling these gangs the Leergut-Mafia. The logo you see on the right is from the Deutsche Pfandsystem GmbH.

Related earlier TT topic: recycling and deposits on bottles

EDIT (29.Oct.2006): The above post might not be entirely accurate. Although the bottles were sourced in Lithuania, the scamsters themselves may in fact be German. For details, see the later post in this discussion.

I saw that on the news last night, was flabbergasted that someone got away with it for so long.

Got away with it or are still getting away with it? Have they caught the gang? And how long have they getting away with it for?

Anyway, I do wish these people would piss off and commit their crimes in their own country. This small minority of people casts a slur on all foreigners living in Germany.

The article mentions a security system slowly being implemented to prevent this fraud. Retailers are understandably skeptical that any measures can successfully prevent this abuse.

Does the article mention who gets stuck with the loss for this?

The retailers lose, tough shit on them.

I wouldn't have the bottle to do something like that.

Well they can take the losses out of the money they make from the people who pay the deposit but never return the bottles. Lets face it when they first brought the pfand system for tins and plastic bottles out here, where you could only take them back to where you bought them from, they must have made a bomb! It's obviously better now, but it still seems a bit chaotic.

Anyone else reminded of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer & Newman stuff a mail van full of bottles in NY and attempt to drive them to CT where the deposit is higher?

It will make up for the bottles I dont return I put them in the bottle bank and just return the empty crate.

I think Germany made a mistake with this system as it is more cost and energy efective to use the bottle bank system.

Nonsense, once again. What is the point in smashing up a bottle and then going through the entire manufacturing process in order to recreate the precise same bottle? Cleaning and sterilising is much more efficient and environmentally-friendly. Reuse, not recycle.

Britain used to do the same, but eventually the throw-away culture became just too tempting.

They built a new trash burner in Ausburg a couple of years ago. Because people are made to separate the waste, it ends up that the burner cannot burn the trash because it is too organic and wet. So they add all the plastic and cardboard back at the depot, and it burns a treat.

I personally find something slightly odd about the fact that hundreds of fuel burning private cars drive their trash around to the recycling centers, when I think in my head it would be more efficient if one big vehicle drove around the streets picking up the rubbish for the citizens. I am trying to think of a name for this brilliant invention. I am thinking of calling it a "cart-dust" or a "bin-dust-lorry" - just not quite got the right name yet, but its a stunning idea huh?

Like charging a deposit on bottles at the airport just before you board the aircraft. Who's gonna take a plastic bottle to abroad & bring it back FFS. Not many. That's just annoying and a bloody rip off. I asked the woman at the airport once if she was gonna charge a deposit on my chewing gum packet too. Well why not I say, you don't know with this lot do ya! (It also gives me a warm feeling to cause a bit of mayhem)
I say well done to the lithuanians for being so inventive and ramming it up 'em. Welcome to trade free Europe

One of the main reasons behind this law which came from the conservative political spectrum, NOT the greenies was to protect smaller Bavarian breweries as give us more excellent beers rather than industrialised fizzy piss from Interbrew.

Utter shite. The majority of waster and recycling is collected weekly or so by a dustcart or you can walk to a reclying point

[img]http://www.awm.muenchen.de/gewerbe/img/laden.jpg[/img]

You only "need" to drive to a tip with really bulky stuff, though you can have that picked up centrally as well.

So errrrrrrrm that's EXACTLY the same as my local council in the UK.

was to rip everyone off under the guise of being "enviromentally friendly".

That is so NOT true.

Under the Kohl government, the CSU from bayern pushed for this law and they got it.
Basicly big multinational and/or north german breweries were throwing more and more canned beers onto the bavarian market and threatening the local brewers who only sold in deposit bottles.

The big northern/foreign guys were getting out of the recycling /waste costs while the Bavarians were carrying the costs.

A lwas was introduced, that had the regulations in place for a compulsory deposit on cans and plastic bottles for beer and fizzy drinks IF the brewing and drinks and retailing ndustries didn't keep the ammount of product being sold in deposit glass / deposit heavy plastic bottles as high as X %.

The industry didn't.

The government spent years hiding the data, so did Rot-Grün and tried to persuade the industry that they were on thin ice as the legislation was already in place. When industry ignored this, the law came in and they did their damndest to make it unworkable.

So any money they have lost on this scam , fuck em.

Sorry MT but that MUST be a load of old bollox. how come it's possible then to buy drinks from the same kuhlshrank, at the airport for example that are "Pfandfrei" and sat right next to the "Pfand Flaschen". How come they slipped through the net if it's compulsory.
Something doesn't add up here . . . . .

The law is very specific.

Beer is subject to it.
Water is subject to it
Carbonated drinks are subject to it.

Wines and spirits are NOT
Juice and non-carbonated drinks are NOT.

So you'll see now in German retail that a lot of companies have iced-tea kind of fruit drinks on the market which as non carbonated are NOT subject to the pfand. there have been court cased brough by jack daniels, does a can of ready mixed JD and cola count as a spirit or as a carbonated drnk for example?

Paris Hilton's prosecco in a can is NOT subject to a pfand but a can of coke is.

Now at the airport I have bought before in Edeka a produckt market as Apfelschorle from Adelholzer but it was "pfandfrei". ??? two possibilities

Either it is possible to get an exception to the law at airports and the like?
Or, Adelholener have cleverly made this product. That the fizz comems from natural apple fermintation in the bottle and NOT from the addition of CO² thus making it "pfandfrei". ???

new laws- Apfelschorle and Ice Teas are also included in the Pfand, but not in tetra packs only in bottles. Started August 1st.

@MonksTown

I have brought iced-tea plastic bottled drinks at airports and had to pay deposits on them.

Could be that possibly if the % of the juice was higher than the water they were free of pfand?

It is shitty when you are leaving the country, I keep stuff i brought outside of germany for those trips.

no, read my post, they added a bunch of drinks to the list as of August 1st, I just know, now I pay .25 dep on a bottle of Ice Tea- so I switched to Tetra Paks.

Grammar innit Carm, WERE, as in, in the past!

Did you know that under the old Labour govt of the 70s had plans to nationalise all the breweries to stop the big brewers getting their hands on them. It was the only good idea they had and to be honest, if they had I may have just joined you on the "darkside"

1970s Labour government? Monetarism even before the Evil One came to power.
Knifing working class living standards to please the IMF.

but the 1970s were dark times for beer. Double Diamond or Watneys Red barrell anyone?

Sorry MT I'm still not gonna swallow that (scuse the expression) because it IS possible to buy mineral water in plastic bottles that do not carry a deposit. I often buy them at the airport & have seen them elsewhere too. Goddam it I'm on a mineral water ohne pfand sortee over Germany tomorrow ...

So if these 'fake' bottles are complete replicas, then can't they just wash, sterilise and reuse them too?

Obviously it still cuts down on manufacturing new bottles, which is the whole aim of the pfand law, right?

In that case, nobody really loses out.

I thought excessive swearing wasn't allowed on this site!

Unless they (the German manufacturers) make the bottles for less than 25c, which seems pretty likely to me.

The ONLY water I have seen on sale as non-deposit has been in tetra paks, not bottles.
Though of course I'm prepared to be corrected.

@ Allershausen: Hofmeister lager, Follow the bear!

@ Hazza, I strongly suspect the 25 cent bottles are not being re-used in Germany but the plastic recycled and exported. The 25 cent pfand was set to put people off using these containers, but obviously opens up a "business" opprtunity.

If they do manfacture them for less than 25c, then we're all getting scammed by having to pay a deposit greater than their worth.

Especially in the days where you had to return all bottles to the place of purchase.

Other things you pay a deposit on (shopping trolleys, mass glasses, etc) all have a deposit much less than the value of the item.

You're going to get yourself banned!

The whole point of the excecise is to get you to bring them back, if it is too cheap a lot of people won't bother.

Hazza, I thought that the 25c was more of an incentive to take them back rather than the actual cost of the bottle. I really can't believe it costs 25c to make a plastic bottle. If they made the deposit say 5c, then fewer people would be arsed to take them back. Of course, making it more than the cost of the bottle leaves them open to scams like this.

Sure, I know that.

But I don't like the system. I'm sure there are better ways to go about it.

That'll be a party seven then won't it?


Dude do you know how much a shopping trolley costs? - The country would starve if you had to go get a 1000 euro note out of the bank everytime you wanted to use a shopping trolley. Either that or all the old grannies would suddenly develop bloody great big muscles so as to facilitate the carrying of goods around germany's wonderful sales outlets

MT: I WILL find you some evidence. The only thing I can add is that the bottles without Pfand are really cheap & thin and from really obscure companies. I'm intrigued . ...

There could be a scam in getting shopping trolleys in Germany for €1 and then selling them in Lithuania for considerably more...

I think I know the bottles you means and that isn't water in them, its a non carbonated "refreshing drink".
It may fall under the law now due to the changes from 1 August Carm mentioned.

Transport costs Hazza innit.

Transport costs are fuck all.

Get 10 trolleys for €10 and stick them in the back of a van. Take them to Lithuania and sell them for €100 each.

Voila - there's €990 profit!!

Bit heavy?
And it would be obvious they were nicked at point of sale innit whereas these bottles were going sneakily into the system. but you may have an idea, errrrm you've got a van for the pub right?

I don't have a van, but this could fund it!!

Got to have the contacts to a dodgy local supermarket to sell em though.
Here you just walk into Tengelkack.

This is why they are getting tighhter on the rules and demanding bottles that are not crushed and with the label still on.

I personaly would not buy a drink that is in a re cleaned plastic bottle. If you realy think about it, it is more expensive to return bottles for re use than to bottle bank them . returning bottles is far more expensive, and the German government knows they have done the wrong thing, like the motorway charging plan that they had to drop.

Germany does make mistakes you know.

I take my bottles back to my local Wiengut he cleans and re uses on site. Only like this is cost effective.

The rest goes in the bottlebank. The beer here is so cheap anyway.

Except the heavy duty ones that (sometimes) have CocaCola products in them I think most returned plastic bottles are not re-used, but the plastic recycled.

The 25c deposit "forces" you to sperate that drink containers out and give it back into a dedicated recycling process and forces the manufacturers and retailers to take some responsibility for their packaging which they weren't before.

And what have motoway charges got to do with the price of eggs?

Where Germany went wrong with motorway charges for HGVs was that they let TollCollect get away so long with a system that wasn't working when they should have been charging them millions in late fees by enforcing a decent contrct.

The systems working now, it wasn't "dropped".

Yes but not in the way they wanted, It was a disaster and cost a fortune.

It's now working. All HGVs using German motorways have to pay a toll.
Either via an OBU, on board unit or at an automated payment machine at a services etc.

So the money is coming in and HGV users are contributing towards the infrastrucutre.

The OBUs and GPS tehnology etc was very advanced, more advanced that other remote systems in use in other countries. So there were dealys and glicthes and the introduction was some 18 months later than planned.

The government planned on the income but declined to enforce and penalty clauses in the contract with the providers. That could have been for 101 reasons.

Course, all tehnological advances in the UK under government contract are always delivered on time and work don't they?

The deposit does not ' force' me. I put them all in the bottlebank. i am not going back to Globus to hump the crates a mile from the car, to join a Q of Germans that stand so close breathing down your neck i have to tread on their toes to stop them doing it. Having waited for ages to ' get my money back' I than have to stack them in the right place.

You must be joking. I am not doing that i can earn more than it costs me in the time it takes.

Its like going round like robots.

Beer in glass bottles carries a what 8 cent deposit?
If you are driving anyway to a large store, i don't see the hassle of returning them.
At 8 cents a bottle, maybe you can't be arsed. Fair enough.
Don't trash em mind, I'd leave them where the local Penner are and they'll be glad of the money.

25 cents a bottle on the plastic ones certainly "forces" or encourages me to return the plastic back into a dedicated recycline system. I just tip the bag in the container when I'm in the shop at the end of the street anyway.

Hey here,

I think "Editor Bob" should not spread lies, or at least should read German articles more careful (or learn German language) as the mentioned text says:

"In Schleswig-Holstein flog erst kürzlich eine Bande auf, die in Litauen 150 000 Plastikflaschen herstellen ließ und mit einem gefälschten Barcode ausgezeichnet hatte, um die Automaten auszutricksen."

That means, some tricksters have ordered 150,000 plastic bottles with haked bar codes in Lithuania.

Note that this is the only mention of "Litauen" in the whole text, so actually this (most probably) NOT a "Lithuanian scan" like Mr. Editor Bob says, and the whole passage posted by Editor Bob is COMPLETELY WRONG:

"Now the crafty Lithuanians have come up with a scam. They produce imitation bottles in their home country, together with fake barcodes, then drive round all the German supermarkets. They feed the machines and run off with the winnings."

"THEY" are not "Lithuanians"!
Bottles were made in Lithuania - yes, that's true but the initial German article does not mention any criminal cheaters from Lithuania.