demand for more cars precisely because we have this public infrastructure. At the same time, this infrastructure boosts competition between providers.” By comparison, “digital multi-use infrastructure is ultimately a digital data highway,” he adds. Urff and his colleagues are concerned with nothing less than the question of what shape the platform economy will take in the future. If all providers were to use a common digital standard, ReFrastructure believes that logistics – from transport to dishwashing – could be organized much more efficiently and cost-effectively. His non-profit organization is not alone in this approach. Several local pilot projects, including system providers such as Recup, Relevo, and ReCIRCLE, have launched tests, including in the Munich suburb of Haar. “I don’t think we need a shared system,” says Vytal’s CEO Fabian Barthel. He also believes that it is unrealistic to expect restaurant owners to take back containers belonging to different systems regardless of the possibility of digital processing. Instead, Barthel envisions a large network of return machines in public spaces that accept containers from different providers and recognize the respective container’s IDs. This would require interfaces between the systems, but not a shared data platform. “We need to decouple the issuing and return processes,” Barthel is convinced. Pilot projects have already been launched in Berlin and Munich. Once again, this is about more than just a technological issue. Is digitalization an opportunity for a new economy for the common good or a way to differentiate yourself from the competition? Both beliefs have one problem in common: money. There is no viable business model for either a nonprofit digital infrastructure or a network of return points in public spaces and the logistics behind them. At the end of the day, there’s no money to be made from returns. They only generate costs. Who should pay for the additional labor when disposable containers are cheap? That means politicians must go a step further if they want to bring the obligation to provide reusable containers8 to life. The various actors in this young market largely agree. One solution could be a hefty single-use tax9 that subsidizes the financial cost involved in the return and dishwashing logistics of reusables systems. Again, the digital transformation to reusable containers appears to be a joint venture of digital pioneers of this young economy, established players in the to-go market, and a policy that not only enacts laws, but also creates suitable conditions for their implementation. This is exactly what makes things complicated. 8 https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/neuemehrwegangebotspflicht-fuer-speisen-getraenke 9 https://www.presseportal.de/pm/22521/5540782 10 https://mehrweg-einfach-machen.de/ Kick-off meeting of the Reusable Alliance10 in December 2022. Initiated by ProjectTogether, the Reusable Alliance, and WWF, a broad alliance of businesses, communities, and initiatives wants to make reusables the standard with digital innovations playing an important role. 25
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