Imported Lagers

Yuengling prepares to phase out its returnable bottles at country’s oldest brewery in Pottsville ST. MARYS, Pa.

One of the last breweries in the country that still sells beer in returnable glass bottles needs help from its Pennsylvania customers to keep the environmentally-friendly program.

Straub Brewery, a 138-year-old family-owned business about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, is begging customers mostly in Pennsylvania but also some in Ohio, New York and Virginia to return thousands of empty cases.

Without them, Straub says it will do as nearly every brewer has done over the years — eliminate returnable bottles from its inventory. Only one other major brewer and the nation’s oldest , D.G. Yuengling & Sons of Pottsville, still sells beer in returnable bottles. But it plans to phase out the practice by fall.

All major brewers, including Anheuser-Busch, Miller and Coors, gave up on returnable bottles years ago because their costs multiplied with national distribution. About 12 percent of all U.S. beer was sold in returnable bottles in 1981, but since 2007 the percentage has been negligible, according to the Beer Institute in Washington, D.C. In Pennsylvania, more than a quarter of all beer was sold in returnable bottles in 1981, but that was when state liquor control laws required most beers to be sold by the case through distributors which readily accepted the returns.

Dan Straub, the great-grandson of Straub Brewery founder Peter Straub says the company will keep selling cases of 12- and 16-ounce returnable bottles if enough are returned to support a production run.

“It’s not that we’re totally into green, but we think it’s the right thing to do,” said Straub. “Why recycle when you can reuse?'”

The brewery spent more than $900,000 about five years ago to buy 150,000 cases of returnable bottles, and most of them were sold but not returned. Brewery officials figure most of the bottles were retained by customers who may have recycled them or kept them for home brews or because they aren’t used to returning them. Customers who still have them, Straub says please return them.

Straub customers pay a $1.50 deposit per 24-bottle case and can get it back or just buy another case when they return the bottles to the store, distributor or brewery.

Straub can produce 1,500 24-bottle cases of 16-ounce returnables and 2,100 cases of 12-ounce returnables in a day. But one recent batch of 16-ounce returnables was just 753 cases because they had no more empties.

“When the system of returnables works, everybody wins,” said Bill Brock, Straub’s chief executive and great-great-grandson of the founder. “We’re just not getting that glass back.”

Most brewers stopped using returnable bottles because they require extra energy to clean them and transport them, since they are heavier so they don’t break and must be shipped both ways.

Nearly all soft drink companies also no longer offer returnable bottles.

LeRoy Telstad said his Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Winona, Minn., is one of only two bottlers in the U.S. that still produces Coke in returnables. The other is in New Mexico.

The returnable-bottle model still works for Telstad because he serves a four-county region less than 70 miles across and also offers regional soft drinks under the “Sunrise” label in returnable bottles.

“It’s become so much of a niche now,” Telstad said. “Customers like the nostalgia of it.”

But 90 percent of the soft drinks and juices he sells are in nonreturnable bottles and cans.

About 20 percent of Straub is sold in kegs, and the brewery will produce about 45,000 cases of bottles and cans this year with 20 percent of that in returnable bottles, said Bill Brock, Straub’s chief executive and great-great-grandson of the founder

Dick Yuengling said his company will produce about 30,000 cases of 12-ounce returnables this year, but the amount is a negligible percentage of total production, said Bill Brock, Straub’s chief executive and great-great-grandson of the founder.

“The consumer’s been indoctrinated; we’re a throwaway society,” Yuengling said. “Everybody’s environmentally conscious, but if you put a case of returnable bottles in front of them, they say, ‘What’s that?'”