Guides/How To's
August 2, 2023

How To Add Bottle Deposits To Shopify Customer Orders

How To Add Bottle Deposits To Shopify Customer Orders

Bottle deposits for certain products are used in some EU countries like Germany, and several U.S. states. If you run an online business selling products in bottles, cans, and containers, you must be aware of bottle deposit regulations. These regulations apply to certain areas, so it is better to make sure that you are compliant.

In this article, we take you through the basics of what bottle deposits are. And, we explain you, why you might need to use them for your business. Next, we’ll tell you how our app, EasyGift, can help you integrate bottle deposits seamlessly into your Shopify store. If you want to learn all about bottle deposits and the easiest way to use them on your website, read on!

What Are Bottle Deposits?

Bottle deposit (or container deposit) legislation is an innovative way for governments to increase recycling*, reduce waste, and reduce littering. This type of legislation is common throughout the world, but more established in some countries than others.

The bottle deposit system works like this: when you buy products, you pay a deposit on the bottle or other packaging. This is the basic principle of this system. You can then return empty bottles to get your deposit back.

What is included and excluded from the scheme depends on each country. In Germany, many items are part of this recycling scheme. These include bottles of beer, soft drinks, aluminium cans, water bottles, yogurt containers, and multiple-use containers.

But, whenever items like milk and juice bottles, wine bottles are bought in other countries, they can’t be returned for a deposit in Germany.

Deposit amounts also vary depending on which country implements it. Typically, it is a small amount of less than a Euro or Dollar per item. Returns can usually be made at places like supermarkets using specialized vending machines. The items will then be collected to be sent to recycling companies.

Why Add Bottle Deposits To Your Customer’s Orders?

Whether you have to include deposits on your bottles and containers varies by country. However, including bottle deposits is a great way to encourage your customers to recycle and reduce their waste. 

Legislation about recycling programs has been introduced around the world to help businesses and customers do their bit for the planet. It relies on customers returning recyclable, eligible product containers to designated drop-off points to be recycled in return for a refund on their deposits.

In Germany, where the scheme has been running since the early-2000s, it has been successful. Between 97-99% of non-reusable bottles are returned by German shoppers. Around 99% of cans are also recycled. This demonstrates how integrating bottle deposits into your store can help to increase recycling and reduce waste!

How To Add Bottle Deposits To Your Shopify

So, you need to use bottle deposits but don’t know how to integrate this into your Shopify store? Luckily, 506 Shopify App, EasyGift can help!

EasyGift is an extremely simple way to auto-add items to your customer’s shopping carts. It uses custom product rules to seamlessly add whatever you want to customer’s carts without compromising your store’s performance or UI. You can use the customizable rules to neatly add bottle deposits to your customer’s purchases without any extra hassle.

1.Create A Product Rule For Bottle Deposits Using EasyGift

Screenshot from EasyGift App showing how to create triggers for rules

Setting up a rule for bottle deposit on Shopify is simple. You can create a product rule to automatically add it to your customer's cart when they buy eligible items.

What Are Product Rules On EasyGift?

Product rules are conditions that automatically add rewards to a customer’s shopping cart on your Shopify website. These can take the form of products, discounts, or discounted products. They can be triggered when a customer adds certain products or combinations of products to their cart.

2.Decide which triggers apply the rule to

EasyGift is highly customizable. You can set it to trigger on any product in your store, whether it's an individual product or an entire collection.

You can also allow the rule to be triggered more than once per cart. This means that if your customer purchases multiple eligible items, EasyGift will add automatically as many bottle deposits as needed.

Also, you can choose to able or disable the setting which allows customers to remove auto-added products. Which means that depending on the regulations in the countries you ship to, the customers can/can't remove the bottle deposits.

3.Select your targeted audience

It is always very important to target your audience properly. People of the same gender, age, or country can react differently due to cultural differences. Many factors affect whether people are willing to comply with the bottle deposit rule.

Targeting the audience is to ensure the new rules will not have a negative impact on the cart completion rate.

4.Schedule the rule on your store

With EasyGift you can schedule multiple rules at the same time. Which means that you can run different campaigns simultaneously. So, you can have some rules, like the bottle deposit one that is permanent. And run it along some temporary marketing campaigns to increase customer engagement and encourage them to comply with the new rules.

Would you like to know more about product rules?

To help you master product rules, we have written an article with simple and in depth information on how to create a product rule with EasyGift

Note that if you have any more questions, you can always reach out to our friendly support team.

Sources:

https://www.bottlebill.org/

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