Pfandringe, Flaschensammler Etiquette, and the Berlin Streets Where 'Pfand Gehört Daneben' Began

The Official Rule

There isn’t an official rule here so much as an origin story most people never hear, and a set of small habits that matter more than any piece of hardware. A Pfandring is a metal ring or small holder fixed to the outside of a public bin, letting an empty deposit bottle sit visibly on top instead of getting buried in the trash, so a bottle collector, a Flaschensammler, can take it without digging through garbage. SettledIn’s main guide to Berlin’s Pfand system already explains why the city never built a citywide network of these, tracing it back to BSR’s failed 2014-2015 pilot at Hardenbergplatz and Spandau. What that guide doesn’t cover is where the whole idea of donating a bottle in the first place actually began, and it began here, on a handful of Berlin lampposts, well before any city agency got involved.

Where “Pfand Gehört Daneben” Actually Began

Munich’s and Hamburg’s own SettledIn guides both mention Matthias Gomille as the person behind “Pfand gehört daneben,” the sticker-and-crate campaign that eventually reached both cities, but neither says where he actually lived and worked. He was, and as far as the record shows still is, a Berliner: a 30-year-old advertising art director based in Friedrichshain who started the whole thing around 2011, roughly a year before it drew wider press coverage. His method was almost aggressively simple. He and early supporters cut beverage crates in half and cable-tied them to lampposts near Görlitzer Bahnhof in Kreuzberg, on Sonntagstraße in Friedrichshain, and in Mauerpark in Prenzlauer Berg, three Kieze that had nothing in common administratively but everything in common as places where empty bottles piled up fast.

Gomille’s own explanation, reported by Berliner Zeitung, was blunt about why this mattered more than it might sound: collectors were reaching arm-deep into public bins, sometimes past broken glass, to retrieve bottles worth a few cents each, and he called that plainly demeaning. The campaign’s Facebook page drew close to 18,000 supporters, and Berlin bands including Beatsteaks and Jennifer Rostock lent their names to it publicly, alongside original songs written for the cause. Berlin’s own waste authority, BSR, wasn’t on board, rejecting the whole premise on the grounds that loose bottles on the street were a littering and injury risk rather than a courtesy, the same institutional instinct that would later doom its own Hardenbergplatz pilot. The idea spread anyway, reaching Hamburg, Munich, Oberhausen, Cologne, and beyond, all while its actual birthplace stayed a set of ordinary Berlin lampposts rather than any city program.

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels

The Etiquette Nobody Actually Explains

Knowing the history is one thing; doing this well day to day is a different, much smaller set of habits, and it has almost nothing to do with whether a Pfandring happens to be nearby. Keep the cap screwed on rather than loose or removed. A loose cap on a single-use bottle makes it awkward for a collector to carry without spilling, and it can cause a Rückgabeautomat to reject the bottle outright once they try to redeem it, the same logic behind the general German habit, also confirmed in t-online’s consumer reporting, of returning bottles with their caps left on. You don’t need to rinse the bottle thoroughly, just tip out whatever liquid is left so it doesn’t drip on someone’s hands or bag.

Set the bottle upright, not lying on its side, so it can’t roll into traffic or spill what’s left in it, and place it beside or on top of the bin rather than balanced somewhere it might tip and break, especially with glass. Don’t crush single-use plastic bottles either; a crushed bottle can fail the shape scanner at a reverse vending machine even after a collector goes to redeem it, turning a good intention into wasted effort for them. And the detail that matters most, one Gomille’s own framing points straight at: this works best as a small, quiet courtesy rather than a visible act of charity. Set the bottle down cleanly and walk on. Don’t linger to watch it get taken, and don’t insist on handing a bottle directly to someone who hasn’t indicated they want that kind of exchange. Bottle collecting is real work with real, if modest, income behind it, and treating the gesture as basic courtesy toward someone working, rather than a favor extended to someone in need, is the entire difference Gomille was originally trying to create.

Berlin’s Other Small, Mostly Forgotten Attempts

Gomille’s crates weren’t the only informal push Berlin ever made on this, just the one that actually stuck in public memory. In January 2013, Pankow’s district assembly considered its own version of a bin-mounted bottle container, championed by the local Left Party group with the Greens and Pirates on board, running in parallel to a separate, better-known 2012 proposal in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Left Party spokesperson Matthias Zarbock argued the health risks collectors faced digging through bins made action overdue, echoing almost exactly what Gomille had said a year before. Neither the Pankow nor the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf pushes, nor BSR’s own later Hardenbergplatz pilot, ever scaled into a lasting citywide fixture, a pattern this guide’s companion piece on Berlin’s Pfand system covers in more depth. What’s carried Berlin through the gap instead has always been closer to Gomille’s original idea than to any of these official attempts: a habit, not a piece of hardware.

Step by Step

1. Don't go looking for a citywide Pfandring in Berlin. SettledIn's Berlin Pfand guide covers why BSR's own pilot never scaled up; the etiquette here matters more than finding a specific ring.
2. Set your bottle upright, beside or on top of the bin, not inside it. This is the entire original idea behind "Pfand gehört daneben," and it works at any bin in the city.
3. Leave the cap screwed on and don't crush the bottle. Both make it easier for a collector to carry and later redeem it without a machine rejecting it.
4. If you're near Görlitzer Bahnhof, Sonntagstraße, or Mauerpark, know that you're standing where the whole movement began, even if the original crates themselves are long gone by now.
5. Be quiet about it. Walk on rather than watching the bottle get collected, and don't insist on a direct hand-off unless a collector clearly welcomes it.
6. For a larger batch of bottles, SettledIn's Berlin Pfand guide covers Sozialhelden e.V.'s PFANDGEBEN deposit islands running year-round in ordinary parks, a more reliable option than leaving a large batch beside a single bin.

Compliance Note

This page describes informal donation etiquette and small-scale historical and district-level attempts in Berlin, current as of mid-2026, not a citywide program or legal requirement. The current physical condition of the original Görlitzer Bahnhof, Sonntagstraße, and Mauerpark installations, and the final outcome of Pankow’s 2013 proposal, could not be independently confirmed at the time of writing.