What that bag of empties is worth: 0.15 and 0.25 euro, read off the logo on the label, with milk and juice joining in 2028

That bag of empties in the kitchen converts to cash today, and there are only two amounts. Plastic bottles under one litre and every drinks can are worth 0.15 euro; bottles of a litre and above are worth 0.25. You do not work that out from the material or from the shop. You read the deposit logo on the label, which prints the amount, and the return machine reads the same logo. That matters if you recently moved to the Netherlands, because milk and juice bottles look exactly like fizzy-drink bottles and currently return nothing. A proposal published on 4 September would remove that line: from 1 January 2028 every plastic bottle up to three litres carries a deposit, dairy and juice included. So two things today — take back what carries a logo, and count how many of your bottles do not yet.

• The amounts now: 0.15 euro on plastic bottles under one litre and on all cans, 0.25 euro on plastic bottles from one litre upwards; the logo sits on the label and prints the amount inside it. (source 1)
• How to be sure: the official advice is to read the logo on the label, and if in doubt to feed the packaging into the machine — whatever it accepts carries a deposit, whatever it refuses does not. (source 1)
• The proposal of 4 September: from 1 January 2028 every plastic bottle up to three litres carries a deposit, dairy and juice bottles included, and plastic bottles and cans may no longer be sold without one. (source 2)
• Return rules in the same proposal: shops of 200 square metres and larger must be able to pay the deposit back in cash, larger retailers must accept returns, and small shops can be exempted. (source 2)
• Why it is changing now: European rules require ninety percent of plastic bottles and cans to be collected before 2029, and the proposal names that as its target. (source 2)
• Where the current system comes from: the 0.15 euro deposit on small bottles has applied since 1 July 2021 and the deposit on cans since April 2023. (source 3)

The sum is short and counting once gives you the answer: small bottles and cans times 0.15, plus bottles of a litre and over times 0.25, is what you can hand back today. A week of six cans of fizzy drink, two small water bottles and one 1.5-litre bottle is eight times 0.15 plus one times 0.25, which is 1.45 euro. Multiply that by fifty-two and the year comes to 75.40 euro. This is money you already paid: it was charged inside the shelf price, and not returning the packaging simply leaves it with the system.

The second sum is the one to prepare for 2028, and it is the easiest to overlook right now: count how many bottles of milk and juice you get through in a week. Those bottles return nothing today, and after 1 January 2028 the same bottles will carry a deposit. Four milk bottles a week, priced at the current small-bottle rate of 0.15 euro, is 0.60 a week and 31.20 a year. This is not a reason to start hoarding — a deposit can only be refunded if it was charged at purchase, so today's empties will not qualify later — but it does tell you what your recycling bag will look like once that line moves.

One more thing is worth settling first: a small shop is under no obligation to take your empties back. The proposal states that larger retailers must accept returns while small shops can be exempted, and the rule that shops of 200 square metres and over must pay out in cash is also part of the 2028 proposal rather than today's law. So the reliable route today is a supermarket machine rather than the corner shop, and whether you get coins or a voucher for that shop depends on the machine in front of you.

The background is worth a sentence. Documents obtained by NOS under the Dutch freedom-of-information act show that the responsible state secretary worked for months with drinks producers on a deposit lottery as an alternative to raising the deposit itself, and that the environment and transport inspectorate was repeatedly blocked when it tried to enforce the law. None of that changes what you can hand back this week, but it explains why collection rates stayed low and why a 2028 proposal is now doing the catching up.

Hokimi field note: do not sort the bag first, tip it out and look for the logo. Anything carrying one goes into the machine, anything without it goes into the plastic waste as usual. The single thing to remember is that the logo on the label decides whether you get money back — not the shape of the bottle, not the material, and not where you bought it.