Concept visual: Wild Bite Club.
Since 2023, many German takeaway outlets have had to offer reusable cups and containers, yet sales of disposable units rose. The failure reveals why circular packaging is a service network, not merely a second box at checkout.
The strangest object in Germany’s circular economy is a clean takeaway bowl waiting beside the disposable ones. Since 1 January 2023, many restaurants, cafés and food retailers have had to offer a reusable alternative when they sell food in single-use plastic packaging or drinks in single-use cups. The customer can take the familiar throwaway container or enter a return system. In legal terms, the choice exists. In behavioural terms, it barely moved.
The first-year numbers are blunt. A peer-reviewed study of Germany’s reusable-packaging obligation cites 14.6 billion disposable takeaway units sold in 2023, up from 13.6 billion in 2022. Reusables represented only about 1.6 per cent of the market. The Institute for Ecological Economy Research later reached the same practical conclusion: the obligation to offer a reusable option had not produced a noticeable increase in its share of German food service.
This is not proof that reusable packaging cannot work. It is evidence that putting a second container at the till does not create a circular system. Germany regulated availability; the disposable box retained convenience.
A mandate with an escape hatch
The German rule is more carefully limited than its shorthand name, Mehrwegangebotspflicht, suggests. It is an obligation to offer, not an obligation to use. The Federal Environment Ministry says qualifying sellers must provide a reusable alternative and clearly inform customers. Small outlets with no more than five employees and a sales area of no more than 80 square metres face lighter requirements and can instead fill a container brought by the customer.
The distinction matters. A restaurant can comply while almost every order still leaves in disposable packaging. A small sign can satisfy the information requirement without making the reusable bowl the default. A staff member can technically offer the option while a delivery screen, queue or hurried handover keeps steering the transaction toward single use.
Observed: Germany created nationwide availability, but first-year disposable volumes increased. The policy removed one barrier—absence—while leaving several others intact: deposits or app registration, return deadlines, uncertain drop-off points, container storage, washing, staff training and the customer’s need to remember a second errand after lunch.
The consumer does not order a container
People order noodles, coffee or curry. Packaging is usually a low-attention decision made after appetite, price and speed have already been negotiated. The disposable option fits the existing script: receive food, eat, discard. Reuse inserts a future obligation into that script. Even when borrowing costs nothing, the customer is accepting a small piece of inventory that must travel somewhere else.
The 2024 study by researchers including Katrin Theobald found a familiar attitude-behaviour gap. Consumers could recognise the environmental benefits while still avoiding the format. Businesses reported weak demand alongside practical handling and hygiene challenges. Each problem reinforces the others. When few customers ask, staff mention the option less often. When turnover is low, stacks of bowls consume storage and the return network feels sparse. When the network feels sparse, fewer customers borrow.
The environmental promise also depends on repetition. A durable bowl has a production footprint and must be transported and washed. Its advantage is earned through enough cycles and a high return rate, not by existing once. A forgotten container in a kitchen cupboard is not a circular success; it is a heavier single-use package.
Two companies redesigned the missing journey
Germany’s reusable-system operators reveal what the law alone did not supply. Vytal’s current offer is built around tracked distribution, collection, cleaning and reporting. The company says its technology supports a 99.2 per cent return rate and can run through an app or integrate with a point-of-sale system. In this model, the bowl is only the visible part. The actual product is custody: who has each container, when it is due back and where it can re-enter circulation.
Relevo attacks similar friction from another angle. Its owner, Duni Group, describes an app-based system in which customers borrow and return cups and containers without a deposit or manual tracking. The company took the model from its established German base into Sweden in 2025. Both systems are commercial claims from providers, not independent measures of the whole German market, but they show the operational work required after a government says “offer reusable”.
A reusable format needs enough participating locations to make return plausible. It needs standardised shapes that stack, survive washing and fit actual meals. It needs a rule for loss, a way to reconcile stock and a handoff that does not slow the lunch rush. For delivery, the return journey is harder again: the meal arrives at a home or office, but the empty container does not automatically travel back with the courier.
The closed loop has an address
Emerging: the strongest opportunities are appearing in places where the return path is already built into the occasion. Campuses, office canteens, festivals, stadiums and corporate sites repeatedly serve the same population within a bounded space. A bowl borrowed at lunch can be returned near the next coffee. Collection can be visible, washing centralised and communication consistent.
Open city networks promise greater reach, but density is unforgiving. Ten accepting restaurants scattered across a large district do not behave like one convenient system. The customer evaluates the nearest return point, not the total partner count on a provider’s website. Fragmentation also creates a shelf of incompatible bowls and apps behind the counter—the circular equivalent of needing a different charging cable for every device.
This helps explain why reusable cups often have an easier commercial story than food boxes. Coffee is frequent, relatively standardised and commonly bought along the same commute. Meals vary in size, sauce, temperature and shape. A pizza box, soup cup and compartmented lunch tray cannot always share the same pool, while their cleaning and drying needs differ.
Europe is making the experiment larger
The German outcome now matters beyond Germany. The European Union’s revised packaging regulation began applying in August 2026, against a backdrop of packaging waste that had risen by more than 20 per cent in a decade. Reuters reported that Europeans generate around 180 kilograms of packaging waste per person each year and that packaging consumes roughly 40 per cent of the bloc’s plastics. The regulation sets waste-reduction, recyclability and reuse measures that tighten over the coming years.
Germany offers an early warning for the next stage. Rules can make reusable service available; they cannot make a return network dense, interoperable or habitual. If enforcement focuses on whether a bowl is technically present, businesses will optimise for compliance. If policy measures actual circulation—share of orders, return rates and completed reuse cycles—it begins to reward the outcome.
The counterargument is practical. Restaurants are already managing food costs, labour shortages, hygiene rules and volatile demand. Mandating a default, charging for disposables or requiring detailed reporting can add cost and conflict at the till. Small independent operators have less space and less negotiating power than chains or institutional caterers. A system that treats every venue identically could push complexity onto the businesses least able to absorb it.
That does not rescue the offer-only model. It suggests better sequencing: common standards, shared wash capacity, public return infrastructure and simple price signals before tougher targets. The aim should be to make reuse the easy path, not the virtuous path that requires the customer to perform extra administration.
Possible next: sell the journey, not the vessel
Possible next step, based on the evidence: reusable takeaway will move away from being presented as a packaging upgrade and become a service feature. Food apps could show the nearest return point before checkout. Chains could accept competitors’ standard containers. Office landlords could provide universal return banks. Disposable packaging could carry a visible fee, while returning a bowl could generate immediate credit. These are WBC projections, not announced elements of Germany’s current law.
For operators, the useful metric is not how many reusable containers were purchased. It is how many paid food occasions each container completes before loss or retirement. That number connects sustainability to unit economics. A bowl that rotates quickly can replace repeated packaging purchases; a bowl that sits behind the counter is stranded capital with a green story.
The commercial opportunity belongs to whoever removes the after-meal chore. That may be a national pool, a delivery platform, a city-funded wash-and-return utility or a closed venue that controls the full loop. The risk belongs to restaurants asked to hold multiple systems while customers remain indifferent.
The bowl is not the product; the return is
Sources & further reading
- Federal Environment Ministry: Packaging waste and reusable alternatives
- German Environment Agency: Promoting reusable packaging systems for takeaway consumption
- Sustainability: One Year of Mandatory Reusable Packaging in Germany
- Institute for Ecological Economy Research: Reusable takeaway packaging
- Vytal: Current reusable-system model and return process
- Duni Group: Relevo reusable system and expansion
- Reuters: EU packaging rules enter into force in August 2026