29 Cents for an Empty Shampoo Bottle: Inside Germany’s Deposit Scheme for Cosmetics

The shampoo is vegan, the lotion was developed without animal testing, the formula is free of microplastics. And the empty bottle still goes in the bin. A start-up from Heilbronn in southern Germany wants to close that gap: reo takes cosmetics packaging back through the beverage deposit machines that already stand in German supermarkets, and pays 29 cents per container.

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It sounds like the kind of idea you want to like immediately. We still checked what is actually happening right now, which brands take part, and whether the four launch partners are as vegan as they first appear.

400 million bottles, one single use

Around 400 million single-use shampoo bottles are consumed in Germany every year. The number has been circulating since early summer, and in every source we could find it traces back to reo. We are not aware of an independent survey behind it, so we treat it as an order of magnitude rather than official statistics.

The direction holds regardless. Cosmetics packaging is a one-way street: produced, filled, shipped, used once, thrown away. Beverages have had working reuse systems for decades. For shower gel and body lotion there have only been isolated schemes with their own collection boxes or return envelopes, and hardly anyone keeps those up in daily life.

How the return works

reo's trick is to build no new infrastructure. Returns happen at the beverage deposit machines that participating Kaufland and VollCorner stores already have. Participating packaging carries a digital code the machine recognises.

1. Drop in the empty container. Only products from the four partner brands, only in participating stores.
2. Take the voucher. The machine prints a receipt worth 0.29 euros per container.
3. Redeem it at the till. Exactly like a normal deposit voucher.

What is missing here is worth noticing: no deposit is added at purchase, there is no app, no registration, no customer number. Returning a bottle leaves no personal data behind. In an industry where every sustainability scheme now comes attached to an account and a points balance, that omission is a relief.

The line at the very bottom of the website

At the foot of cashstatttrash.de sits a footnote that is easy to miss and is the most honest sentence in the whole project:

“During the 2026 test period the returned packaging is not yet reused, so no real reuse loop exists yet.”

Notice on cashstatttrash.de, retrieved 28 August 2026, translated by us

So the return itself is what is being tested first: does the machine reliably recognise a shower gel bottle, do enough people come, what does retail do with the material? Washing and refilling is the next step. reo showed its purpose-built washing facility publicly for the first time at the Heilbronn kick-off in late June.

Reading the press material, you might come away thinking the loop is already turning. It is not. For a pilot that has been running since November 2025, that is an entirely normal stage. It is simply worth knowing the difference before declaring your bathroom saved.

Why reuse beats recycling, but only from the second cycle

Recycling has a built-in problem: turning old material into something new costs energy, water and in many cases virgin material on top. Washing a bottle and refilling it skips that step entirely.

The logic does not apply from the very first return, though. Reusable packaging is usually thicker and heavier, washing consumes water and heat, and the bottles have to be collected and transported. Johanna Meier, environmental engineer and LCA expert at Fraunhofer IBP Stuttgart, presented life cycle assessments for the participating packaging at the kick-off. According to Laverana, the result is that from the second to third cycle onwards the reusable option beats single use ecologically.

That is the real benchmark for this project. A deposit system whose bottles drop out after one round would make the balance worse rather than better. Whether reo reaches the necessary number of cycles will only become clear once refilling begins.

Are the four brands vegan? The honest answer

Natural cosmetics and vegan cosmetics get lumped together easily. They are two different things, and among reo's four partners the picture varies. Here is what the brands themselves say:

• LOGONA and Santé both belong to Logocos in Salzhemmendorf and list their ranges as fully vegan.
• lavera labels vegan products individually with the Vegan Society mark and writes that this label has “conquered a large part of our entire range”. A large part is not all of it.
• Kneipp deliberately uses animal ingredients in some formulas. In its own FAQ the company names beeswax, honey extract and milk components, and points customers to the INCI list on the product. Individual lines such as lip care are certified vegan by the V-Label.

For shopping that means the back of the bottle still needs a look, and the reo logo does not replace it. If you want firmer ground on ingredients generally, our piece on vegan cosmetics and clean beauty covers the markers worth knowing.

Who owns the four brands

Natural cosmetics often looks like a family business and rarely is, so here is the ownership picture as it stands:

• Laverana (lavera) is independent, founded in 1987 by Thomas Haase, based near Hanover, with around 450 employees.
• Logocos (LOGONA, Santé, Heliotrop) belonged to L'Oréal from 2018 until early 2023. The group sold the business to the New York investment firm CoBe Capital, and the company has operated independently since.
• Kneipp has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Paul Hartmann AG since April 2008.

None of these arrangements makes a product worse. Anyone shopping deliberately should still know about them.

Why the EU is setting the pace

The timing is no accident. The EU packaging regulation PPWR (Regulation (EU) 2025/40) puts the industry on a clock: reuse requirements apply to certain packaging formats from August 2026, and from 2030 binding rules on recyclability and recycled content follow. Companies building the structures now avoid expensive retrofitting later.

Sabine Kästner, sustainability officer at Laverana, puts it this way:

“We could spend years discussing the perfect reuse system for cosmetics, or we can simply start now, enter new territory and try to do it better together. The EU packaging regulation makes it clear: a deposit system for cosmetics packaging is coming. The question is not whether, but how.”

Sabine Kästner, Laverana GmbH & Co. KG (translated)

Regulation as a driver is familiar from other areas. First “climate neutral” claims disappear from packaging, then the names of plant-based products end up in dispute. On packaging, the EU and the brands are pulling in the same direction for once.

Heilbronn becomes the second model region

The pilot started in November 2025 in Munich, together with Kaufland, VollCorner Biomarkt and the Zero Waste Innovation Hub München. On 24 June 2026 the kick-off for the second model region followed, at the Gravity hub on the Heilbronn education campus. Eight more Kaufland branches in the Heilbronn area are to join. On 28 August, though, the location list on cashstatttrash.de still showed only stores in the Munich area, ten Kaufland and ten VollCorner.

Heilbronn is a well-chosen site: the city holds the title of European Green Capital 2027. Mayor Harry Mergel welcomed the initiative, and Dr Julia Hufnagel placed the project within the city's sustainability strategy.

The catering was fully vegan

One detail we enjoyed: the food came from Heaven's Kitchen, the vegan restaurant inside the Gravity hub at Bildungscampus 11, which is the same address reo is registered at. The team describes itself as vegan, sustainable and climate-friendly, works to a zero-waste approach and says it produces more than 75 percent less waste than conventional catering. There was quiche, canapés with microgreens, coconut granola jars and strawberry desserts.

It sounds like a footnote. It is a signal: at an event with the city leadership, a retail group and researchers in the room, the food on the table was entirely plant-based, and nobody made a thing of it.

What this means for you

If you live in the Munich area and already have lavera, LOGONA, Santé or Kneipp in your bathroom, take the empties along and collect 29 cents each. It costs no more effort than the recycling bin, and it helps the project exactly where it currently needs data.

For everyone else it is a case of watching. The interesting moment comes when the first refilled bottle reaches the shelf, and when the system opens up to drugstore private labels, where the large volumes sit. We will follow this and report back as soon as the return test turns into a real loop.