Glass & Can Returns

Mike Fetzer | Jul 24, 2024

Grocer Mike Dean’s concerns about accepting empty beverage cans at his food stores are well founded. In Michigan, all consumers must return glass bottles and aluminum cans to grocers in order to receive compensation for their container deposits made at time of purchase. Concerns about a cashier handling food purchases after handling a returned, used can/bottle mark just the start of hygiene angst. Customers often dump their bags of empty can returns into shopping carts in the parking lot for transport into the store—after the unwashed cans and bottles have been touched by the thirsty consumers and the mouths, hands—and who knows what other body parts— of the consumer and family and friends—in what are hundreds of homes and workplaces with varying housekeeping, and sanitation standards. Upon handling and returning the contaminated containers and the bags and carts in which they were transported for return, the customer often wheels his/fer shopping cart around the store as they fondle and inspect produce, dairy products and other possible purchases, some of which are replaced back on shelves and into coolers for other customers before reaching the cashier. No one can seem to point to research or studies that establish what viruses or diseases may or may not be transmitted in the disgusting process.

Surely there is a better, more ecologically safe and efficient way to return cans.

Mike Fetzer