25 cents each – this is the amount that will be required as a deposit from January 2025 if you buy a disposable bottle or can in Austria. Will the change have an impact on the purchasing mood? Vöslauer and the Starzinger Group certainly fear deposit frustration at first.
By 2030, Vöslauer boss Herbert Schlossnikl wants to double the reusable share from 20 to 40 percent. He hopes for an extra boost from the planned disposable deposit and wants to further promote reusable plastic and glass.
From January things will change in Austria: a 25 cent deposit will be required for disposable bottles and cans. Schlossnikl expects that from April onwards, most containers on supermarket shelves will be reusable bottles.
“People will be grumpy”
The introduction of the one-off deposit also requires something from the consumer. “People will be grumpy,” says marketing director Yvonne Haider-Lenz. “This cannot be good for product sales,” fears Patrick Moser, Managing Director of the Starzinger Group. Moser speaks of “different effects”: for example, there is a greater coordination effort between retailers and manufacturers, and old labels must be brought to market in time before the switch takes place.
After years of learning how to squeeze and then throw away their plastic bottles and aluminum cans, consumers now have to return them intact to the deposit machines. This is a huge change that goes against the trend towards increasingly convenient and uncomplicated consumption. “Convenience always wins,” says Moser.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
