Recycling used bottles benefits the environment and is good for your conscience. But in Germany, criminals have allegedly found ways in which it can make you a millionaire.
A 27-year-old man faced court on Thursday in Bochum on two fraud charges, after allegedly making €1.2m (£1.1m) through illegally manipulating machines used for the German deposit return scheme for bottles and cans.
He is accused of defrauding drinks manufacturers by disabling the shredding mechanism on two machines, allowing him to claim back deposits for the same bottles over and over again.
With each plastic bottle usually earning a 25-cent return, the accused man would have had to “recycle” his set of bottles 4.8m times.
His lawyer claimed his client was a “straw man” who had taken over a retail outfit as a favour to a distant relative, unaware of the manipulated machines having been put in place.
Under the deposit return scheme, which has been in place in Germany since 2003 and is due to be introduced in England this year, customers pay an additional deposit or pfand as part of the price of a bottle or can, which they can reclaim when returning the drinks container to a vendor.
The return usually takes place via sophisticated “reverse vending machines” that scan in the bottles and hand out a voucher customers can cash in at the counter. Reusable bottles are stored and sent back to the manufacturer, while non-reusable “one-way” bottles, usually made out of polyethylene terephthalate, are shredded inside the mechanism.
Since retailers are obliged to pay back deposits even for non-reusable bottles they do not sell, a clearing system is meant to compensate shops for any potential losses. Prosecutors in Germany believe criminal gangs are trying to exploit this system by claiming back deposits for bottles they did not receive in the first place.
The organisation responsible for deposit clearing said it had been aware of fraud attempts since 2016, but had struggled to detect individual instances of criminal activity due to the vast daily data streams involved.
