Since the start of the year, deposits of 25 to 50 cents (22 to 45 US cents) have been put on canned beer, non-alcoholic fizzy drinks and mineral water.

Until now, the only way to get back the money has been to return the can or bottle to the shop where it was bought, providing proof of purchase.

It worked if it was bought at a large supermarket or the local shop, not if it was purchased on the spur of the moment at a snack bar or somewhere like a railway station.

From now, however, any shop selling such products is obliged to pay out on any returned can, regardless of whether it was bought there.

German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said the new scheme would make it easier for consumers, and criticised drinks handlers for not having put in place already a homogenised nationwide collection and recycling system.

Germans are already famously obsessive about recycling. Citizens carefully separate household waste into as many as four separate containers.

However, many of the nation's leading supermarkets have now cleared shelves of all deposit-hit cans and bottles.

TERRA.WIRE