Recycling for Songs

(Photo: epSos .de)

Reader Peter Danza tipped us off to the way Sweden is trying to incentivize its citizens to return bottles. The reward: free music:

Sweden has a deposit bottle system similar to many other countries – plastic bottles and metal cans carry a deposit value (“pant” in Swedish) of usually 1 or 2 Swedish crowns, equal to about 15 to 25 US cents. This system should take care of itself: Most consumers should return their bottles (to retrieve their money back), and if they carelessly throw them away, there are a whole lot of poorer people who gladly look for bottles in the trash. That’s exactly how it works in Germany. (In fact, when you go out at night with a beer bottle and you’ve emptied it, you’re usually nice enough to put it next to a trash can rather than inside.)

That same system seems to be facing troubles in Sweden, however. So much so that now the bottle deposit organisation Pantamera commenced a campaign to promote returning bottles: If you return a bottle, take a photo of the receipt and send it to their website, you will receive free songs by a well known Swedish DJ.