The plastic bottles of soda we buy bear the message no refill, and I wonder how much of a mystery that poses to Americans under 30.
 
At Weingarten's, the supermarket of southwest Houston, we'd walk in the front doors right into a cloud of stink more like what you'd expect out back near the trash bins. It radiated from baskets piled full of 32-oz. soda bottles, returned by shoppers for the deposit money. We knew when they hadn't been taken out in a while, because the syrupy-bacteria odor would follow us a good ways into the store.
 
Shoppers returned their bottles for the deposit, a small incentive—maybe $0.05 per bottle, which meant more then than it does now—and I have no idea how Weingarten's kept track of that. Maybe we got a chit from an entry-level employee who had to stand amid the rotting Coke smell eight hours a day. More likely it was an honor system, and you just told the cashier you'd brought your bottles back, and she'd apply the refund to your purchase—or not, if you were buying more soda.
 
Periodically, the bottler's rep would show up and load all the glass into a truck. From there, I guess, it went to some sort of cleaning facility where the bottles were lined up and sorted before refilling.
 
Yes, they refilled the old soda bottles with new soda. And why not? They'd remain serviceable for I-don't-know-how-long, showing up on store shelves in paperboard six-pack carry-cartons, with abrasions all over the etched-on labels.
 
 
sometime in the 1970s, this practice died out. I guess as the science of plastics advanced, there was no need for all that glass to be carted from store to home, back to store, then to bottler, and back to store again. Or maybe they needed the glass to make silicon chips.
 
However, on a 1992 trip to Mexico City, I was reminded that the rest of the world isn't like the U.S.
 
I was urban-hiking up a hill called Chapultepec, which reminds me of the Alamo as a site of noble sacrifice-cum-tourist-trap. My group, which included one Mexico City native, paused at a street vendor's cart while I bought a soda called Boing. Its alien-orange color attracted me. I paid the $.50 or whatever the 12-oz. bottle cost, taking note of its bruised glass and figuring that like everything else in this town, it was just naturally shabby.

I started to rejoin the group, but our native accomplice motioned for me to stop. I turned back toward the vendor, who was coming out from behind his cart in a friendly but determined manner. I looked again at my friend for an explanation.

"You're supposed to drink it here," she said. "He needs the bottle back."

I almost laughed. Yes, that's how slim the margins are in the Third World. You drink the soda, then you give the bottle back. To the same guy you essentially rented it from. So he can get it refilled. And not lose a nickel, which his family needs.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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