h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Surely the original and most efficient method of recycling drinks bottles is to wash and reuse them. The drinks industry in the UK (and the Jam industry) used to do just that, with an occasional returnable deposit. (A system I believe still used by French Wine co-ops.)

However, during my lifetime this practice has slowly ceased among retailers, and over the past fifteen years has slowly vanished from the on trade as well, with Britvic, Schweppes, all the major brewers and most of the small ones now moving entirely to NRB (Non Returnable Bottles.)

This makes no sense at all to me on a cost basis, and as commercial concerns pay more to recycle than to send these bottles to landfill, most do not recycle, which makes no environmental sense to me, so why have the manufacturers done this?

In fact I will post this on ask the community as well because I am intersted to know why such a seemingly stupid move has been made.

In the case of the WOBO, re-using the bottles was out - shipping them back from the Caribbean to the Netherlands would cost more (and require more energy) than making new ones!

But I don't know why they should stop the practice elsewhere. It's certainly still the norm in Germany