A deposit is required for almost all commercially available beverages in cans and bottles. Despite the deposit, these are often disposed of in the nearest public waste garbage can and thus removed from the recycling cycle.

People collect these returnable bottles and cans from public waste garbage cans for a variety of reasons, which may contain food waste, broken glass, syringes or dog waste bags.

The Pfandring® solves this problem: citizens can deposit their empties cleanly and safely in the ring. Deposit collectors then do not have to reach into the waste garbage cans. The collected bottles and cans are fed into the recycling cycle.

The SRB's operating committee decided to introduce such deposit rings in January 2022 at the request of the Die Linke / Die Partei council group. The SRB was commissioned to test such a collection system in Salzgitter and started a pilot project with deposit rings at five waste garbage cans in heavily frequented areas of Salzgitter-Lebenstedt city center at the beginning of May. This will run for a period of around three months and aims to test the acceptance of this form of disposal among the population as well as usage behavior.

On the basis of this pilot project, an assessment will then be made as to whether the rings will be used in larger numbers in the city area in the long term.