Statiegeld (Don't Be a Heather)

Aweh, guys!

Let me preface this by saying, don’t be a Heather.

When we first arrived in the Netherlands, we were told to separate our garbage into plastics, paper, glass and restafval, and I followed that. I have been dutifully separating our recycling and disposing of it in the correct places. Glass in the glasbak, plastic in the plastiekbak and bodies in the open ditch on 5th Street.

One day, I was at Albert Heijn doing my thing when a lady came in with a huge bag of empty coke bottles. She went to this weird machine in the back and started feeding in her bottles and then she got a receipt from the machine. I quickly deduced that she was getting some form of deposit back on the returned bottles and I was right! It’s called statiegeld. Each coke bottle returned was twenty five cents… and I had been throwing mine into the recycling.

The magic money machine

And it’s not just coke bottles but beer bottles too. You can return an entire crate of beer with the empties into the machine. We did this and got €3.90 back. We converted this into more beer! You can also check your bottles as some six pack bottles can be returned at 10 cents a pop. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but at least it’s something.

Just be sure to check your bottles. Not every bottle can be recycled but they will tell you in which recycling bin to put it. Also, statiegeld is deducted at the till. So, if a bottle is one euro on the shelf, it will ring up with the extra amount that you can later claim back. So, don’t be a Heather. Recycle and get your well-deserved statiegeld back.