[MandieD]

Most Germans don't bring back racks of glass beer bottles and bags full of plastic water bottles because they care about the environment so much - they do it because there's a 0.08-0.15 EUR deposit on reusable glass, 1.50 EUR on the plastic racks and 0.25 EUR on one-time use plastic drink bottles, and big stores that sell bottle drinks have developed automats for accepting the empties and tallying up the refunds because they have to accept all standard bottles, even if they don't sell that particular item.

Any other recycling that happens is mostly because trash bins are only emptied every two weeks, and more than a 60L bin for a household is punitively expensive. Even if you don't care about the 3.10 EUR you'd get back for the rack of beer, you do care about having to pay to get rid of something that large.